Brainboy and the Deathmaster (9 page)

At the aquarium BJ hopped off the board and hoofed it back across the tracks to the public elevator to the Pike Place Market. Up in the market the Korean guy at the fruit stand eyed him warily as he walked by, though
he
hadn’t been the one to rip off a banana when the gang swaggered through the arcade an hour ago. He passed the fish throwers and the big piggy bank his mother dropped change into. When he got to First Avenue, he headed south, toward Pioneer Square,
where you could get a bus up Yesler Way. He skulked along in the shadows of the buildings on the west side of the street, hoping to go unspotted by anyone who knew his mother.

It didn’t surprise him to see somebody curled up asleep in the doorway of a boarded-up Army-Navy store. First Avenue was the original Skid Row, so named because in the old days they dragged skids of logs down to the waterfront on it, and bums and derelicts had always hung out there. But BJ was surprised that the sleeper looked familiar. He stepped into the doorway for a closer look. Stretched out on a sheet of cardboard was the scrawny boy with the ponytail and the tattoo who’d disappeared out the window at the Masterly Children’s Shelter. BJ squatted down and gave him a shake. Boris shot up like a rocket. BJ lunged for his ankle. Boris was too quick.

But the sidewalk wasn’t crowded, and thanks to his board, BJ was able to catch the weasel and pin him against the smoky-brick wall of an SRO hotel.

“What’d I freakin’ do to you, man?” Boris muttered.

“You stole my friend’s GameMaster. Remember?”

“That’s years ago.”

“It was a month ago.”

“So what?”

This was a good question. What did BJ care about
Darryl and his GameMaster? In a month Darryl hadn’t bothered to call once. He was surprised he’d even referred to him as a friend.

“Jeez, man, you need a bath,” BJ said.

“Sorry. I ain’t stayin’ at the Ritz.”

BJ relaxed his grip on Boris’s arms. “Listen. If I let go, will you chill a minute?”

“Sure.”

BJ let go of him—and Boris bolted. BJ snagged his sweatshirt. As Boris tried to slip out of it, BJ grabbed him around the neck.

“Let go or I’ll yell for the cops!”

“Go ahead,” BJ said.

But of course Boris didn’t.

“Look, man, I just wanted to know if you found your sister yet.”

“What’s it to you?”

“Just curious.”

“Nah. I was up in Bellingham last week, but it was a bust.”

“You lost her down in Portland, right?”

“That’s where we ran out of gas. We was thinking about Canada.”

“Your sister can drive?”

“Nah, she’s just twelve. I was driving.”

“You can drive in Oregon when you’re fourteen?”

“Nah, I kiped my dad’s car so we could run away. Hot-wired it.”

“Huh,” BJ said, not sure he believed this. “So you ended up in a shelter and your sister just disappeared?”

“I figure somebody started beating on her like you’re doing to me. So she split. What’s it to you?”

“Just it’s kind of strange. Darryl disappeared, too.”

“The GameMaster guy?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re killin’ my neck.”

BJ let go of him.

“It is kind of weird, them two both disappearing,” Boris said, this time staying put. “The two whizzes.”

“Have you checked to see if your sister went home to your dad?”

Boris snorted. “No way she’d do that. But yeah, I checked one time. Had this girl I met call and ask for her. My old man hadn’t seen her in months. Not that he cared.”

Smelly as Boris was, BJ was beginning to feel for him. “How long you been sleeping on the streets?”

“Who knows?” Boris pulled a beetle out of his greasy hair and squashed it between his fingers. “Tell you the truth, I was thinking I might go back to that shelter for a few days. Rest up, get a shower.”

“Let’s go.”

“Now?”

“We can catch a bus to Madrona down in Pioneer Square. I’ll go with you.”

Half an hour later BJ was ditching his board under the hedge of old rhododendrons bordering the shelter’s gravel drive. The sneering redhead, still not placed, was sprawled on the porch glider when they walked up.

“P-U,” she said.

“You don’t smell like no rose petals yourself,” Boris snapped.

“Where’s Ms. Grimsley?” BJ asked.

“Probably in the garage sniffing the bucket seats in her new car,” said the redhead.

But BJ found Ms. Grimsley reading in her office.

“Mr. Walker,” she said, shoving her paperback into her bag. “Surely it’s not Saturday.”

“No. I brought Boris.”

“Hey,” Boris said, stepping in. “I was wondering if I could stay a few days.”

“We’re not a hotel, Mr. Rizniak.”

“But he’s been living on the streets,” BJ said. “You’re not full up, are you?”

“Not at the moment, no.”

In the end she grudgingly agreed to let Boris have a room—the same third-floor room he’d shared with Darryl a month ago. BJ accompanied him up there.

“She didn’t know about the knife?” Boris said, closing the door.

“Nah,” said BJ.

“Thanks, man. Where is it?”

“I got it at home.”

“Can I have it back?”

“When you cough up Darryl’s GameMaster.”

“I had to sell it for bus tickets.”

BJ sat down at the desk. “Do me a favor, will you?”

“What?”

“Take a shower.”

“You’re the one stinking the place up.”

But in a minute Boris actually did traipse out of the room.

Left on his own, BJ flicked on the laptop—the real reason he’d come. Ever since he’d watched Darryl play StarMaster, CastleMaster had seemed kind of lame, but on his Saturday visits here he never had time to try his luck, what with his mother waiting in the car. He’d forgotten about the maze, though. This one looked disturbingly complex. But he concentrated on visualizing a path through it, and with a couple of lucky guesses he managed to make it through with five seconds to spare.

The game list appeared, and he clicked on StarMaster 3. His opponent was called SuperSuk. He just called himself BJ. But he wasn’t experienced and
had recruited only two Individualist leaders when Boris came back in—smelly as ever.

“You didn’t shower?”

“Keep your shorts on. I wanted to check out Grimface’s new wheels. You’re not gonna believe what she’s driving.”

“What?”

“A brand-new S-GPS 600.”

“A Mercedes?”

“No, a toaster oven. What do you think, dork-brain?”

“But they’re top of the line.”

“No duh. Come on, man, you got to check it out.”

So BJ gave up the losing cause and went to see Ms. Grimsley’s fancy new car.

A
s soon as she opened her eyes, she shut them again and tried to get back to the circus tent. She’d just let go of her trapeze; she’d been somersaulting through the air to the astonished gasps of the crowd below. A tiny figure was swinging toward her, hanging by his knees from another trapeze, growing bigger and bigger the closer they got. It was Boris! She flew toward him, but when she grabbed his hands, she couldn’t quite hold on, and the crowd sucked in its breath. Yet even as she tumbled through the air, she knew she would land in the safety net, and soon Boris would drop down and join her there and the relieved crowd would give them a hand anyway.

However, she landed in her bed. She wasn’t a dare-devil flying-trapeze artist at all, she was just Nina Rizniak, twelve and blind as a bat. And she wasn’t with her brother, she was all alone in room seven at Paradise Lab. Most mornings she managed not to cry, but the feel of her brother’s hands, brief as it had been, seemed so real that she couldn’t keep her eyes from misting over, making the rosy blur of the globe light turn to tomato soup.

The soup brightened as Mr. Masterly’s recorded voice filled the room:

“Rise and shine, friend and colleague. It’s a new day—the day you may well make the discovery that will change human history. …”

Nina put a pillow over her head, muffling the inspirational voice. Long after the daily pep talk ended, she was still trying to get a grip on herself. But finally, knowing she would be the last to breakfast, she tossed the pillow aside and climbed down out of the luxurious bed and put on her glasses.

Eyeing her from across the plush room was a young acrobat. She’d happened across the painting, by Picasso, a couple of months ago, while surfing through Art on her remote, and she’d left it up ever since because it reminded her of Boris.

Picking up the remote, she went to Music, and soon her favorite song filled the room. She’d found it, too, by chance, while surfing through Campfire Songs.

The moon and the sun, she thought as the wall panel slid back and she walked into the blue-tiled bathroom.
How wonderful it would be to see Boris and the outdoors again! Then they could join the circus and become the Flying Rizniaks, just as they’d planned. And he would get her contact lenses, as he’d promised, so she wouldn’t have to worry about her glasses falling off when she was somersaulting through midair. They would become famous and make a fortune, but when their father came to beg money from them, Boris would pretend not to know him, and when their father said, “But I’m your father!” Boris would say, “The one who beat me with his belt?” If their father denied it, they would give him nothing, but if he admitted it, they would give him a thousand dollars, so long as he promised never to come begging again. And she and Boris would buy a house so big, they could practice their trapeze act in the living room, and there would be a whole wing for their hamsters and gerbils and monkeys and dogs and cats and parakeets and turtles. …

Her mood entirely changed, Nina bounced out of the dressing room in a sky-blue jumpsuit and sun-yellow jelly shoes, her face washed, teeth brushed, curly blond hair combed as well as it could be. But once she left room seven and the hopeful song behind, her mood soured.

She trudged down the carpeted corridor into the dining hall. When she’d first joined the others here after
her orientation, the dining table had been oval shaped, but a couple of months ago a new one had replaced it, shaped irregularly, like a cross section of the G-17 molecule. As she took her place there—things at Paradise Lab tended to be numbered, and there was a 7 on the back of her chair—six of the seven kids already there regaled her with a chipper chorus of “Morning, Nina.”

“Morning, everybody,” she said, doing her best to sound chipper back.

The kitchen door swung open, and out shuffled Hedderly with a steaming platter of scrambled eggs. He gave it to Ruthie Katz, who was eighteen and sat at the head of the table.

“Very good, Hedderly,” Ruthie said in the tone a parent would use on a small child.

Hedderly wasn’t a small child. He was a balding, two-hundred-fifty-pound man. But as with Abs and Snoodles, there was something docile and childlike about him. He had the same vacant eyes and the same crescent-moon scar on his forehead.

After spooning herself a portion of scrambled eggs, Ruthie passed the platter to Mario Hernandez in chair number two. Though small for his age, Mario was seventeen. He took some eggs and passed them to sixteen-year-old Billy O’Connor, who had flaming red hair and flaming red pimples. In chair number four sat Paul
Pettinio, who was fifteen and, in spite of Abs’s efforts to get him to do calisthenics, extremely fat. Chair number five was Suki Yamashita, also fifteen, with long, straight, jet-black hair that Nina envied. Next came Greg Birtwissel, the prissy fourteen-year-old in chair number six, who passed the eggs on to Nina. She spooned some onto her plate and passed them on to the boy with messy dirty-blond hair in chair number eight—the one who hadn’t said “Morning, Nina,” probably because he didn’t know her name. She’d seen him a couple of times with Abs up on E, but he’d been in orientation, so she hadn’t bothered trying to make conversation, even though he looked about her age. This was the first time he’d joined the rest of them for a meal—the first time since she’d come here that she hadn’t been the last served.

Hedderly shuffled back out of the kitchen with a basket of muffins.

“Blueberry?” Ruthie said, taking the basket. “No bran?”

“Sorry, miss.”

Ruthie clucked her tongue.

“I’ll eat yours,” Paul volunteered.

But Ruthie took a muffin and passed them on. When they reached Suki, Hedderly reappeared carrying a plate heaped with crisp strips of bacon. He could
easily have brought the bacon and muffins in one trip, but things like that never seemed to occur to him.

At each of the eight places a tall glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice towered over a small, pale-blue vitamin tablet. Once they were all served and Hedderly shuffled away, Ruthie lifted her glass.

“To conquering Time!”

“Conquering Time!” the others chimed in—all except the new boy, who got it out a couple of seconds late, like an echo.

They swallowed their vitamins—all except Nina, who pretended to pop the vitamin into her mouth but in fact palmed it and slipped it into the pocket of her jumpsuit. Then they dug into their eggs—all except the new boy, who started with his bacon.

“Eggs first,” Nina murmured.

“Excuse me?” the new boy said.

“Eggs first, because they get cold fastest,” she said, repeating what Greg Birtwissel had told her on her first day at the team table. “Bacon second. Muffins last.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

He set down the strip of bacon and attacked the eggs. Once they were all on their muffins, the kitchen door swung open again. But this time it wasn’t Hedderly.

“Good morning, Mr. Masterly!” they all cried—again with the new boy a beat behind the rest.

Mr. Masterly stood behind Ruthie’s chair, his hands on her shoulders, and even in the rosy lighting you could tell she was blushing with pleasure.

“It is a good morning,” he said. “We’re now eight strong—a new record.”

“A new record!” several of them murmured appreciatively.

“Stand up, will you, Darryl?”