I open my eyes. He stares at me, unblinking, quiet and motionless in that way he has. Then he nods.
We sit in the spill of light. Motes hang suspended in the air, swirling lazily, and it’s easy to drift off with our stomachs full, looking at the bright sky.
“What do you want with your life, Shreve?”
That’s out of left field, as the saying goes.
“I don’t know. My brother. To make sure he’s okay and isn’t totally screwed up by my mom.” I smile, cross my arms behind my head. “I want to see my girlfriend, I guess.”
“What about your dad?”
“What about him?”
“Is he—?”
“Don’t know if he’s alive or what. He’s a nobody. A never-was.”
He’s quiet for a while, thinking about it. His parents died. My parents ignored and abandoned me. Never knew I existed, maybe. Hard to say which is worse.
“You’ve got a girlfriend?”
“I did…” My turn to think about things. “Probably not anymore.”
“What’s her name?”
“Coco.”
He nods again, like he’s storing away that information.
“So, what do you want, Jack? What do you want out of life?”
He doesn’t hesitate. “What I’ll never be able to have.”
He looks down at his hands—his damned hands. Always the reminder. “I want to be normal. I want to fit in.”
“Why?”
“I…” He’s taken aback by the question. “So I don’t hurt anyone.”
“How do they get hurt?” I think I know, but I don’t think he does. “What happened to you?”
Jack’s still as only he can be. Eventually he opens his mouth. Then he closes it, like a fish out of water.
Finally, he says, “I killed them.”
“Who?”
“My parents.”
“No. How? How could you have done that?”
“I don’t know. Just, when I’m scared or… angry… things happen.”
“Like the Hulk.”
He nods and gives a choked laugh, and wipes the tear that’s come to his eye. It’s a laugh full of self-disgust and hopelessness. My heart breaks to hear it. If I heard that come from Vig … I don’t know what I’d do.
Jack keeps going. He’s started, and now he can’t stop. “I was three. And I remember waking from a horrible dream to find the house burning around me, and flashing lights.” He stops, puts his face in his hands. “I don’t even remember what they looked like.
“They said it was a gas leak. A miracle I survived. I had no other family, no one who’d take me in. So they put me in a foster home. That was … years ago. I’ve slept on every kind of floor, you know. In sleeping bags and closets and on cots. I’ve gone from family to family. And always, something goes wrong and I’m sent somewhere else. Until now.” He looks around at the classroom, at the windows, the bars dividing the light pouring in from the frigid sky. He stares at me.
“Shreve … I…” He squares his shoulders. “I don’t want you as my friend. I can’t … It just won’t work. Everyone who gets near me ends up hurt. I’m sure Booth or the Warden will move me into another cell—”
“Bullshit.” It comes out of me before I know what I’m saying. “You might not want me as your friend. Fine. But you can’t stop me from being yours. You can’t pick your family, they say. Well, you can’t pick your friends either. Or get rid of me so easy. And I’m alert. I know. Maybe even more than you.”
“What do you know?”
“What happens.”
“What happens?”
“Yeah.”
There’s a noise from the front of the room, and at first I think it’s more kids looking for enchiladas. But then in walks Reasoner, smiling triumphantly. Ox trails along behind.
“There he is, boys. Fingers and his girlfriend.”
Looks like we’re having a party and we were the last to know. The Kung-Fu Master hops into the room, and Fishkill follows after.
They spread out.
“We wanted to finish our little talk from the yard, gents.” The Kung-Fu Master looks at Reasoner and then dusts his hands off on his jumpsuit. “No big deal. We just wanna check out the freak show.”
Jack’s standing now, his desk kicked away. The look on his face isn’t one I’m likely to forget soon. It’s hard and careless. Fierce. He looks like he could kill.
Oh, no.
I remember the way he spoke to Quincrux, both of their dead voices. Quincrux laconic and bored, and Jack puzzled but numb. I think he just stopped caring whether he hurts somebody. Just a word, and that switch was thrown.
Jack takes two steps toward the other boys.
“Hoss, I think you better get your little buddies out of here,” I say to Ox. “Something’s gonna happen.”
Ox’s brow furrows, drawing down into a big, hairy V. God, he’s a freaking animal, he is.
“I told you not to call me that, Shreve.”
Kung-Fu Master and Fishkill move to our sides, and Ox comes in closer, so that most of us are in the middle of the desks. But Ox isn’t focused on Jack. He’s bristling with anger and looking at me.
“Yeah? You told me not to call you hoss, hoss? That it?”
Fishkill looks at Ox and says, “Stop messing with Shreve, man. I just want to see the weirdo.” Fishkill turns back to Jack. “Come on, man. We don’t want to hurt you. We just want to check out the fingers.”
“No.” Jack’s voice sounds tight and unafraid. I don’t think he’s even aware of me anymore. I’ve got to keep them off him. For their own good.
“Hey, hoss, Fishkill holding your leash now? At least I fed you. I know how to keep barn animals happy.”
It’s a thousand pounds, I think, the load of bricks that lands on my face. A thousand pounds of brick and stone, wrapped in meat. I fall backward into the desks, scattering them.
When I stop skidding and hitting chair legs with my body and come to a rest in a tangle of metal desks, when my head stops spinning and the pulsing alien thing now living in the flesh of my cheek calms enough for me to rise up on my elbows, I point my throbbing head in the direction of where I was just standing, next to Jack, before the thousand pounds hit my face.
For a beast of burden, Ox is fast.
He’s coming toward me, taking big steps, hands balled into fists. The floor needs more mopping, it seems.
Beyond him, I see Jack surrounded by Fishkill, Reasoner—still grinning his malicious little grin—and the Kung-Fu Master.
“Come on, freak. Give us a look. Show us the hands.”
The air around Jack ripples now. And that tension, the invisible pressure, builds. My ears pop.
Ox kneels in front of me, blocking my view of Jack. He snatches my jumpsuit at the neck and hoists me from the floor.
“This is a mistake, hoss. You’re gonna regret it—”
“Shut your mouth. I’m not your dog.”
“No, that’d be an insult to all dogs—”
You’d think it wouldn’t hurt so much this time. But pain, it can constantly reinvent itself. And this time Ox just slaps me. It’s not a normal slap. It’s a slap bred from toffee, chocolate, and pure vitriol. It’s a slap that freaking animal was born to give. It lands on the side of my head and knocks my whole body sideways, but the brute holds me in place. I feel like I’ve just been in a car wreck.
I open my mouth, because that’s what I do. I talk; I talk, and words are my thing. But now there’s no air to breathe. My mouth’s full of blood, and Ox has slammed his massive ham-hock of a fist into my stomach, so all the choice insults I was going to sling at him, spit at him, sting him with—all the vile insults I was going to use to hurt his delicate ego—they’ll all have to wait until later. When I can breathe.
I slump to the floor. Blood flows from my nose and pools from my lips. My lungs aren’t working.
From where I lie, I see Jack surrounded by the other boys. His body is rigid, held so immobile he looks l
ike a little statue. The Angry Kid is what they’d call it, I think, if it were a statue.
“Come on, freak. Show us the hands, or Ox here is gonna have to do you like he did Shreve.”
Everything slows. It feels like I’ve dived to the bottom of the deep end of a swimming pool and my ears are just about to collapse from the water pressure.
And then Ox steps near, Reasoner raises his hands to grab Jack’s bicep, and the air wavers horribly, like it was gelatin or dimpled glass. Now Reasoner’s and Fishkill’s eyes open wide in surprise, and Ox—the gigantic stupid animal—raises his arms.
Jack shows them his hands.
He throws them out like he’s slapping glass.
The air explodes.
An invisible wall slams into me, ripping at my hair and clothes. Desks scatter in front of the shockwave, rocketing outward and away. The last thing I see before passing out are the goons flying backward and Ox toppling toward me.
And Jack. Jack standing at the center of a circle of destruction.
I’m not out long, I don’t think. Reasoner groans from the far wall, and Ox is breathing. He’s halfway on top of me, his massive trunk across my legs. Kung-Fu and Fishkill are down and indeterminate.
Jack stands over me, wringing his hands. My grandmother used to do that. She wasn’t as dangerous as Jack, except when she sneaked smokes by her oxygen tank. Luckily, when she exploded she only took herself and the trailer.
“Shreve, you okay? I’m sorry—”
“Shut up.” I spit a blood loogey onto the floor. I push myself up but don’t move. I try again. “Help pull this moron off me.”
“Oh … no. Shreve, I’m so—”
“Shut up.”
I don’t really feel like hearing the apologies right now. And hell, he doesn’t need to apologize to me anyway. We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for my mouth.
Between the two of us we move the side of beef off my legs, and Jack pulls me up. My head throbs. Blood drips from my nose, trickles down the back of my throat, wells in my mouth. It feels like someone is dribbling a basketball on my face where Ox hit me.
I’m thinking that Ox did more damage to me than Jack’s … talent. Special gift. Curse. Whatever.
When I’m standing, I grab Jack’s arm and lean into him.
“See? You can’t get rid of me that easily.” I cough and spit a huge wad of gore onto Ox’s chest. “Let’s go. We’ve got to clear out.”
Before we go, I check pulses. Reasoner’s moaning. Kung-Fu is bleeding pretty bad where a desk edge caught his leg. He could be in bad shape, really. But he deserves it.
On the way out I pull the fire alarm so these assholes don’t die. With Jack helping me, we make it out of the classrooms and into Commons before the guards arrive.
We duck into the Commons bathroom, surprising the titty-babies there getting shook down by a couple of oxymorons. When they see the blood streaming from my face, they stop their reindeer games and vacate.
We clean up my cheek as best we can. Jack brings me paper towels to wipe the gore, but there’s nothing we can do about the side of my kisser. It’s swollen to twice its normal size and beginning to discolor. It feels as bad as it looks.
I look like the Elephant Man.
“Gotta get back to the room, Jack.”
“Okay.”
“We’re gonna have to split, you realize?”
“Yeah, we can’t stay here.”
“I don’t mean the bathroom. Split here. Casimir.”
Jack’s eyes widen just a little, but he understands.
“Quincrux.”
“Yeah. When he gets wind of this, he’ll be back. And the witch will be with him.”
Jack looks puzzled. The witch really must have scrambled his noggin good. He can’t remember.
“It doesn’t matter if you can’t remember her. Quincrux is bad enough by himself. And this time he won’t be content with asking you to move glasses of water. He’ll take you away to … to … wherever.”
Jack sighs, squares his shoulders, and says, “I’m tired of moving.”
“Nothing for it except to run. You believe that?”
He looks at me, face-to-face, and nods. “Yeah. I guess so. I remember the man.”
I hold out my hand, like I’ve done a million times with Vig, for him to slap. To give some skin. But Jack just puts his hand in mine, as if to shake. I look down at the over-fingered hand in my mitt, cover it up with my other hand so I’m giving the politician’s pump, and smile.
“This is nothing,” I say, meaning his extra fingers, or his explosive ability, or even his strangeness. Or maybe I mean the fact we’re incarcerado. Or my mangled face. I mean it all, maybe. Or nothing. I don’t know.
But maybe Jack understands what I’m trying to say.
“We stick together.” That’s pretty clear, even with my throbbing head. “So let’s go back to the cell. Stay between me and Norman. Right? Otherwise, he’ll see…” I point at the pulsing balloon that’s the side of my face.
I feel dizzy for a moment and catch myself on the sink before I fall. Ox messed me up good. I’d like to pay him back … but … I guess I had it coming. I rode him too hard.
Nothing happens. We walk past Sloe-Eyed Norman with no problem. He presses the button that opens our cell door, and it swings wide and stays that way—no closed doors on the wing during daylight hours with wards inside.
Once we’re back in the room, I lie on Jack’s bunk. I can’t manage to climb into mine.
“Your face looks horrible.”
“Thanks. And you’re a beauty, too.”
When I giggle, remembering Reasoner’s expression right before Jack blew up, the movement sends shooting pains through my face, but damn … I don’t even care. Thank god I’m as abrasive as I am, otherwise I might have never figured out our twelve-fingered boy was a timebomb. A walking timebomb.
Jack pads into the bathroom. I hear the water run, and when he returns he’s got a hand towel dripping with water. It feels like ice when he puts it on my cheek.
What a guy.
Once the towel warms, I say, “Listen, Jack. Can you do your explodey trick without … I don’t know… getting angry?”
Jack’s reaching for the towel and stops. He cocks his head.
“What do you mean?”
“Jack, the explosion. The shockwave that came from you. Don’t you remember?”
Jack’s looking at me but not seeing me. His eyes are going back and forth in their sockets, moving over a mind’s-eye scene. Now they grow wider, and he drops his hands and stares at me helplessly.
It doesn’t take a mind reader to see Jack’s putting it all together now. His hurt, roving gaze settles on me. It looks like he’s out of it, the fugue or whatever it is, wherever he went.
“I guess so.”
“You remember?”
“Yeah. I remember. I was furious.”
“Do you have to get all Mr. Furious for it to happen?”
He takes the towel from me and walks back to the bathroom. I hear the water run once more, but this time he doesn’t come back very quickly. Maybe he’s staring into the mirror, thinking about things.
When Jack does return, I can tell he’s been crying. His face is puffy and red, and his eyes look glazed. He sits down next to me and puts the towel on my face. God, that feels better.
“I don’t know.”
“Know what?”
“If I can do it without being angry.” He holds his hands out in front of his chest and splays them out like a fan. “Shreve, I didn’t even know I was doing it.”
“I think you knew.”
“Not really.”
It’s my turn to stay silent. His eyes are doing their thing, looking at other times, other places, remembering. He stays like that for a long while, and then he shuts his eyes tight against what he’s seen.
“Yeah, I guess I knew.” He shakes his head. “Yeah.”
“Listen. We’ve gotta get out of here. Quincrux i
s gonna be coming for us. And the witch, Ilsa. You remember her now?”
“I think so. She wasn’t … nice. She was inside me. She made me do what I didn’t want to do.” He shudders. I know how he feels. If I could wash my head out with Lava soap, I sure would have done it by now.
“Yeah. I don’t know how you compartmentalize that.”
“I … I didn’t. I guess I knew if I was aware of it … I would’ve…”
I can feel the pressure building around him. He’s about to go shockwave, and I don’t think my head or face can take another blow. Who am I kidding? If he goes supernova now I’m dead.
“Jack! NO!”
He blinks. He clenches and unclenches his hands. He looks at me. Maybe it’s something in my face, but the pressure eases.
“When I think of her… inside me … I don’t think I can control it.”
“You’ve got to. Jack. Man. This is important.”
He nods, but his face is flushed and his eyes are narrow and his whole body has the aspect of the Angry Kid statue I saw earlier. Rigid and pissed the hell off. My ears pop again.
“Jack! I want you to stand up, go into the bathroom, and let loose there. Can you do that?”
A little muscle is popping in his cheek and cords are standing out on his neck, but he manages to nod again and stands stiffly. His walk to the shitter is slow and deliberate, like he’s thinking about the placement of each footfall. I sit up, even though my head is killing me, and grab the mattress I’m lying on. I pull it off the bed and onto the floor, over my body.
I yell, “DO IT! DO IT, JACK! THINK OF WHAT THE WITCH DID TO—”
I hear a gigantic whoosh of air, an eruption of debris and paper ripping my posters and pictures and scattering my books across the floor, while the bunk beds make a horrible screeching wail and slide forward to slam into the wall. The sound is massive and painful. A fist of air slams into the mattress and shoves me along with it, and we go skidding off the floor and halfway out the front door. The desk chair is thrown so hard against the desk that one of the metal legs is bent at a jagged angle when it comes to rest.
Jesus H. He’s volatile, my Jack.
I pull myself from underneath the mattress and see him standing in the doorway to the bathroom.
He gives me a bewildered look, and then he smiles sheepishly. “I think I broke the toilet. The metal bowl is kinda crumpled.”
The Twelve-Fingered Boy Page 7