TO ALL SOLAR ECLIPSTERS: YOU’RE INVITED TO THE GREAT AMERICAN TOTAL ECLIPSE. SHOW YOUR SCHOOL PRIDE. 5:00 P.M. VIEWING GLASSES PROVIDED IN OFFICE.
“Do you have a name?” Brooks asked.
Yes. More nodding. I just need to wrestle it from my twisted tongue.
“Are you always this rude?”
No. Never. Only when pretty brunettes talk to me. I turned to her, cleared my throat as casually as I could, and forced out, “Zane.”
“You’re new.”
“First day,” I said. “What about you? How come no uniform?”
Brooks smiled, and it was a million watts of wow. “Impressive,” she said. “First day and already at Baumgarten’s? That has to be some kind of record.”
I sat up straighter. “So what’d you do?”
She leaned back, super relaxed, as if she didn’t have to go face the principal.
“I’ll tell you later,” she said, and my heart sort of skipped a beat. Later? That meant she was going to talk to me again. Yes!
I looked down at the yellow folder she was clutching in her lap. She had drawn something on it. Not little doodled hearts, or her name in block letters, or cute kittens. No, she’d sketched a monster with hairy knuckles and bulging eyes. I almost fell off my chair. Wait. Could that be the same one from last night? I blinked to make sure I wasn’t head-tripping. Nope, the monster was still there, every detail the same. I was about to ask her about it when Father Baumgarten opened his door and waved for me to come inside.
Crap! I’d been so busy falling into Brooks’s orbit, I’d forgotten all about my stupid cane. After seeing me hobble into Baumgarten’s office, she for sure wouldn’t want to tell me anything later.
I did the only thing I could think of. I pitched my backpack across the floor, stood up, and pretend-tripped across the threshold. Okay, so it wasn’t the smoothest move, but I’d rather she thought of me as a klutz than as Sir Limps-a-Lot.
The results of my visit with Baumgarten were ten rosaries, detention for a week, a call to Mom, and an apology to the jerk I’d torpedoed with my cane. It was a miserable first day, except for Brooks. She’d made it all worth it. Unfortunately, she was gone by the time I’d recited my last rosary, and I didn’t see her for the rest of the day.
I wondered why she had that underworld demon sketched on her folder. Maybe she has the same Maya book as me, I thought.
Things got even weirder that night. After dinner, I fed Rosie out back before coming in to hang out with Hondo and two of his buddies and watch the big wrestling match between the Strangler and Demento. Good thing Mom was working late or she would’ve strung Hondo up by his toes for breaking her rule about not drinking beer or smoking cigars in front of the kid.
Hondo licked his orange-stained fingers before offering a half-empty Cheetos bag to me. “Want some?”
You’d think with his eating, drinking, and smoking habits he would’ve been a wasteland, but here was the thing about Hondo: he was twenty-one-ish, looked seventeen, and was built like a tank—boulder-size biceps, abs of steel, and hands of iron. He’d always wanted to be a wrestler, even won a gold medal in high school, but then his dream got “hijacked” (another way of saying he couldn’t afford college) and he went to work as a custodian at the bank. I’d asked him once what he would’ve studied if he’d gone to college. He’d smirked and said, Business, so I could become a tycoon and own the bank instead of clean it.
After I got pummeled at school two years ago, he taught me lots of wrestling moves, like the Double Leg Takedown, the Wheelbarrow, and the Gutwrench, but most of the time he was pinning me in the dirt and mimicking a roaring crowd like it was some big deal to beat me, the Freak.
“That junk food’s gonna kill you,” I told him now.
One of the guys snorted, popping a handful of orange synthetic food puffs into his mouth. “We eat them with salsa. That’s what, at least one serving of vegetables, right?”
I rolled my eyes. “Tomatoes are a fruit.”
Hondo just shrugged. “There are worse ways to die.”
How come people always said that? “Like what?” I asked, picking up a couple of empty beer cans and tossing them in the trash. “What’s a worse way to die?”
Hondo stuffed a Cheeto in his mouth and said, “A vat of acid that eats off your flesh. That would be worse.”
Then the doorbell rang. I went to the door, thinking it was another one of Hondo’s sloppy friends. But it wasn’t.
It was Brooks.
“Wha… what are you doing here?” I asked, stunned. How did she know where I lived?
She looked down at my cane. Studied it for so long, I thought I might liquefy into the shag carpet. Then her dark eyes found mine and she said, “That’s a supercool cane.”
“I have a…” My mind went into hyper-speed, riffling through all the words that could describe my leg but not define me: freak, bum, broken.
“I know all about you,” she said. Then she leaned closer and said, “I told you we’d talk later. It’s later now.”
4
I did the only thing I could think of.
I slammed the door in her face.
What can I say? She threw me off guard. I mean, who just shows up on your doorstep without warning? And what was I supposed to do, let her into Hondo’s beer, chip, and wrestling cave? No chance. My heart slammed against my chest and my head felt like it might float off my body.
Then came another knock. Okay, so she was persistent. I stepped back.
“Don’t just stand there!” Hondo barked. “Answer it!”
But before I could react, he was on his feet. The TV announcer screamed something about Demento going down. In response, Hondo’s friends hollered a few choice words I can’t repeat even to you gods.
If I could’ve pulled a Houdini disappearing act right then, believe me I would have, but Hondo was fast, and before I knew it, the door was wide open. Hondo blinked, staring at Brooks like he was as shocked as I was that a girl was standing on our doorstep.
“You selling something?” he asked her.
Brooks shook her head. “I’m here to see him.” She gave me a narrow-eyed glare.
Hondo socked me in the arm. “Where are your manners, Zane? Invite her in.” He held the door open until Brooks stepped inside. Then he went back to the match and I went back to melting into the carpet.
“Uh, we were just watching some TV,” I mumbled to her. “Do you like Cheetos?”
Brooks looked around. That’s when I noticed that when her eyes moved, the amber and yellow flecks in their irises did too, like bits of gemstone in a kaleidoscope.
She lowered her voice so only I could hear. “I need to talk to you…alone.”
One of the guys laughed and threw a chip at my head. “Didn’t tell us you have a girlfriend.”
I wanted lava to erupt from the volcano and swallow me whole.
And just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, I heard the back door slam. Mom was home early. Which was never a good sign, especially when I’d gotten detention and Hondo had turned the living room into a wrestling arena.
The guys scrambled to turn off the TV and retrieve sofa pillows from the floor while Hondo swept crumbs and ashes off the table, as if that would make the place look neater.
I made a move to escape out the front door, but it was too late. Mom was already standing in the threshold of the kitchen with fists on her hips and a scowl on her face. Her eyes looked tired as she took it all in… until they reached Brooks, and then they lit up. “Zane,” she said as she came over to us, kicking an empty beer can out of the way. “Who’s your guest?”
“Uh… er… this is…”
Brooks introduced herself, holding out her hand like she’d gone to some fancy finishing school.
“So nice to meet you,” Mom said, tucking a stray hair behind her ear and flashing a smile that made you feel like nothing in the world could be broken. “I apologize that the house is a mess,” she said. “My broth
er is a caveman and has no manners.”
Hondo didn’t say a single word. He was waiting for Mom to erupt.
Brooks let out a light laugh. “It’s okay.”
I could tell she didn’t know what else to say. Was it okay? How could she stand there looking so casual, like she was used to this sort of chaos? And, more important, why was she standing there? How the heck had she found me?
“We’re going to talk outside,” I finally said to Mom.
She shook her head and smiled again, and I knew behind that plastered grin was a big fat lecture about my getting detention. So the school had already called her. Crap! “Another day,” she said to me. Then to Brooks: “Zane has a few chores. I’m sure you understand. Maybe you can come back some other time?”
“Mom…” I started to argue, but then her gaze hardened. The conversation was over.
I walked Brooks out to say good-bye. That’s when I noticed she didn’t have a bike parked outside. The mesa was a few miles from town, so how’d she get to my house?
“Meet me here tomorrow,” Brooks said. “After school. Time’s running out.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “And oh, before you go, tell me… why did you draw that demon on your folder?”
“Just be here,” she said. Then she started running down the bumpy dirt road. I stayed on the porch, watching her long brown hair bounce on her back as she pounded the earth with those combat boots. I didn’t take my eyes off her, and as the darkness swallowed the last of the light, she vanished like she’d never been there at all.
Mom let Hondo have it. The guys left. Hondo sulked, and I got dish duty for the rest of my life. But Mom never stayed mad, no matter what I did, so later that night she came into my room and asked about the kid I’d nailed with my cane.
“Why’d you do it?”
I rubbed Rosie behind the ears, wishing I could just forget the whole thing. “He tripped me.”
“And you threw your cane at him.”
“Pretty much.”
Mom nodded thoughtfully, as if she totally understood that I had to take a stand or end up with a fat lip like last time. “And the girl?”
“Just met her today. At school.”
“I’m so happy to see you making friends,” Mom said. “She seems nice, and she’s very pretty.”
My cheeks got hot.
Mom patted Rosie on the head. “No more breaking the rules, Zane. You could lose your scholarship.”
Maybe that would be a good thing, I thought. Except that Mom had worked so hard to get me into that school, and I didn’t want to disappoint her.
She held her hand out. “Deal?”
We shook on it. “Deal.”
By the next day, the story about the plane crash had made the front page of the local paper. They even printed my name as the eyewitness. Kids on the bus asked me if it was another alien invasion like at Roswell, or if there were any blood or guts. I just shook my head, trying not to think about it. But you know what? I liked getting attention for something other than my limp.
At school I looked for Brooks everywhere—in the halls, the lunchroom, the gym. I even poked my head into the girls’ bathroom and called her name. That earned me a wad of wet TP in the face. She was nowhere to be found. So I went into the front office and asked the secretary what had happened to the girl who was in there yesterday.
She looked up from her computer and blinked, annoyed that I’d interrupted her. “Girl?”
“Her name’s Brooks. She was here to see Baumgarten.”
“Father Baumgarten.” The secretary pressed her skinny lips together and focused back on her computer screen. “We don’t have a Brooks at this school.”
I leaned over the counter, sure she was wrong. If she’d just give me her attention…
“Can you please double-check?” I asked as nicely as I could. I even smiled. I remembered my promise to my mom. No breaking the rules. No getting into trouble. Did pestering the school staff count?
“Look, I know every student in this school,” the lady said, “and there is no one here named Brooks.”
Don’t do it, Zane. Don’t do it. But my mouth was way ahead of my brain. “What’s my name?”
She gave me a dumbfounded look. And I didn’t stop there. Oh no, I had to go in for the kill. “You said you know every kid’s name in this school,” I said. “What’s mine?”
She pushed back her chair, stood, and walked over to me real slow like she wanted to me to sweat, or maybe she wanted to give me a head start. But I stood my ground and just kept on smiling.
I wasn’t smiling a second later when she made me write the Hail Mary twenty times on Post-it notes.
That afternoon, Mr. O picked me up after detention, since the bus didn’t wait around for rule-breakers. He drove an old Cadillac, the big gas-guzzling, V-8–engine kind. It was black and looked like an undertaker’s car, but he loved it. When I got in he was belting out some Spanish love song that was on the radio, repeating the word amor over and over. The window was wide open, and a group of kids on the corner busted up laughing.
Mr. O was so lost in amor-land he didn’t even notice. Me? I shut my eyes and visualized knocking them in the teeth.
“Did Ms. Cab agree to go out with you or something?” I asked after we were in the clear.
The guy was grinning ear to ear. “Not yet,” he said. “But I am very close to sharing my discovery with you.”
Mr. O kept a little greenhouse in his backyard and grew all sorts of different chile peppers. He was working on something top secret that he couldn’t tell me about yet, but he’d promised I’d be the first to know. I had to admit, I was curious.
“How close?” I asked.
Mr. O gave me a sidelong glance and waggled his bushy eyebrows. “Tonight.”
When we pulled up to my house, Brooks was sitting on the front porch, scratching at the sand with a twig. She was wearing all black again, but this time it was a pair of jeans and a wide-necked sweatshirt. My heart ricocheted off my ribs. (Note to the gods: You better never let her read this.)
“New amiga?” Mr. O said.
“Just some girl,” I said casually, raking my hand through my hair. “Thanks for the ride. See you tonight.” I hopped out of the car and went over to her.
Brooks stood and looked at me with a deadly serious expression. When she did, the amber flecks in her irises shimmered. “You’re in danger, Zane. Big danger,” she said, tossing the stick to the ground.
“Hello to you, too.”
“The plane crash, it was a…” She hesitated, her eyes roaming the darkening sky like she was searching for the right word. “A sort of…”
“Demon from Xib’alb’a?”
She looked surprised for a moment, but then she quickly recovered. “Right. But there’s much more to it.”
Hearing her confirm the impossible made my stomach plummet. So I hadn’t been hallucinating….
“How the heck did it fit into that plane, let alone fly it? Is there some kind of flying school for demons?”
She gave me an are-you-all-there? look. “That doesn’t even matter right now.”
“What could matter more?”
Brooks let out a frustrated groan. “How about that you’re in danger?”
“Yeah, you already said that, and I sort of figured that out when a demon crashed into my volcano.” I kicked a rock across the dirt.
“Your volcano?”
“Yeah. In case you haven’t noticed, it’s in my backyard, and I’m the one who…”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Who what?”
I wasn’t ready to tell her about my secret entrance. I’d wait to see what she had to tell me first.
“And why did you lie to me?” I said. “You don’t go to my school.”
“I never said I did.”
Good point. “Then how come you were in Father Baumgarten’s office?”
“I just told you you’re in danger and you’re thinking about the principal?”
/> Technically, I was thinking about her at the principal’s office. “Where are you from, anyway?”
In the dimming light, I could see Brooks’s nostrils flare. She had six freckles across the bridge of her nose. Her jaw clenched, and she took a deep you’re-annoying-me breath. I knew that look. I’d seen it on plenty of faces in my short life, but it had never really mattered until now. Because now it was Brooks. I still couldn’t believe this gorgeous girl was at my house. And for the second time in two days.
“Are you always so irritating?” she said, crossing her arms. “I’m trying to tell you something important….”
I tried not to lean on my cane. I’d rather be considered irritating than different. “Okay, back to the demon. Your drawing was just like what I saw. Have you actually seen one in the flesh?”
“Yeah. So?”
“My mom couldn’t see it.” I didn’t know if I should be relieved (that I wasn’t going loco) or freaked (that the demon was real). “But if you have, that means I’m not losing my mind.”
“Losing your mind… Uh-huh,” she said. “This is going to be harder than I thought.” Brooks looked over her shoulder. The TV blared through the open windows. Hondo was watching wrestling again—I could hear the grunts and groans and body slams.
Brooks lowered her voice. “Can we talk somewhere else?”
I didn’t get why she was so tense. I mean, we were out in the middle of the desert with no one around. Who did she think was listening in, the FBI?
“First, I definitely think you should tell me about the demon pilot and exactly what you mean by danger,” I insisted. “Like, is it you’re-going-to-die kind of danger, or a-storm’s-coming kind of danger?” I was really hoping it was the latter.
It was a risk. I mean, she could’ve reached her boiling point, thrown up her hands, and stalked off. But, to my relief, she stayed, standing there as if deciding what to tell me. Or maybe how much she was going to tell me, because she looked like the kind of girl who had a million secrets.
“I think I should show you,” she said, “because what I have to tell you… well, you probably won’t believe me. But you have to promise you’re not going to freak out.”
The Storm Runner Page 3