Deviant (9 page)

“This is Vern,” Walt said, and Vern touched two fingers to his cowboy hat.

“Wow, so this is a real chain gang,” Tony said, impressed.

Bob laughed. “Yup, I guess, technically speaking, it is, although we're not chained together; that would make it too hard to work.”

“Pretty rad,” Tony said.

“What do you do, young lady?” Bob asked. The sun had
brought out Bob's orange freckles and he didn't look much like a hardened con.

She grinned. “I'm at junior high!”

“Junior high? I felt sure you were a doctor or a lawyer or something,” Bob said.

“No, not yet, but my dad works at NORAD.”

“Really? NORAD? He ever see any UFOs? I hear they track lots of UFOs there all the time,” Bob said.

“He's not allowed to talk about it,” Tony said happily.

“You're one of the prisoners?” Danny asked Bob, feeling both horrified and also a little bit impressed. He'd thought Bob was a warden or a foreman or something.

“Yup,” Bob said.

“Is this your boy, Walt?” one of the other convicts asked. A big guy with a beard and a New York accent.

“Yes, this is my son, Danny,” Walt replied.

“No, I'm not,” Danny muttered inaudibly.

“So, Danny, how was your first day at school?” Walt asked.

By now Danny's cheeks were burning. His father worked with criminals. Tony's father worked at NORAD. The criminals were talking to Tony. There was a man guarding them with a shotgun.

“It was OK,” Danny said.

“I remember my first day at school—many first days at many schools—it's always a bitch … oh, 'scuse my French, young lady,” Bob said.

“Don't worry about me,” Tony said.

“You're in Danny's class?” Walt asked.

“Yes, we live opposite you,” Tony said.

Walt turned to Bob. “These kids are at Cobalt Junior High. It's a charter school, supposed to be one of the best in the country,” he said with pride.

Bob nodded. “Yeah, I know the place … or rather, I know of it. I've never actually been to Colorado Springs, despite living here for the last five years,” Bob said, and winked at them.

“How do you know about it?” Tony asked.

“There's still a gigantic Tesla coil in there, isn't there? One of the biggest in the country. I don't think they've taken it out,” Bob said.

“Oh, that thing. Yeah, it's still there in the science room. It looks weird. Our science teacher, Mr. Burke, loves it,” Tony said.

“What's a Tesla coil?” one of the other men asked.

“Uh, we should probably be heading on now. We've got
Oliver Twist
to read and I'm real excited to see if he manages to get more gruel,” Danny said.

Walt nodded. “Oh yeah, of course, homework … and actually, you know, we should be getting back to it, right, Vern?”

“I suppose so,” Vern said unenthusiastically.

The men nodded and grunted in agreement.

“Bye!” Bob and Walt said almost simultaneously.

“Be careful on the roads,” Walt said.

“Be better than careful,” Bob said. “Be smart.”

“Bye,” Tony replied.

Danny said nothing. He led Tony quickly back to the sidewalk as the sound of pneumatic machines shattered the quiet of the Colorado day.

“That was cool seeing your dad like that,” Tony said.

“Uh-huh,” Danny muttered.

“I liked that Bob guy, he was funny,” Tony said.

“Was he?” Danny said, and lapsed into silence for the rest of the walk home.

When they came to Johnson Close, their own little cul-de-sac, Tony sensed that Danny wanted to be by himself. He'd seemed OK, but now she wondered if she'd done the right thing, telling Tom to let him into the Watchers. Danny was a bit moody and they couldn't kick him out now that he'd taken one for the team at the hands of Charlie and Todd. But then again, maybe it was just first-day blues.

She said good-bye to him and walked up her garden path.

“Bye,” Danny said quietly.

He hadn't meant to be weird. He'd been looking at the road, thinking.

Now that he could evaluate the blacktop, he saw that the sidewalks weren't great but the roads were new and freshly laid.

He rummaged in his pocket, found the front-door key, and went inside his house.

He knew there was homework, but he didn't feel like homework. His computer hadn't arrived yet, nor his Xbox. They didn't even have TV.

He checked the weather. A slab of gray cloud was covering the entire sky, the ceiling a few hundred feet above his head. It looked like it might snow, but it didn't matter. He had to get out. He stripped off the awful uniform, pulled on his black jean shorts, his Raiders beanie, his red Converse high-tops, his brown hoodie. He looked at himself in the mirror on the back of the dresser. His bangs were almost covering his brown eyes. He wondered if he was good-looking. He was small and dark. Certainly not up there with the likes of Charlie, but definitely more handsome than that Tom dude.

“Jeff!” he called, but Jeffrey was sleeping.

He went upstairs and got Sunflower.

He took it outside and pulled the beanie low over his eyes.

“To hell with all of them,” he said, and pushed off.

He skated downhill from Johnson Close to Manitou Road. His father's work crew had moved on, so he didn't have to deliberately ignore them. He flipped his iPod to a '90s shuffle and heard songs he didn't know by Pavement and They Might Be Giants.

He skated a long time. From Manitou Road to Alameda and all the way out of town.

He skated for miles.

He skated until he forgot about being roughed up.

Until he forgot about the chain gang.

Until he forgot about the school.

He skated east through Manitou Springs along West Colorado Avenue. He skated over the Monument Valley
Freeway and Fountain Creek. He skated deep into the Springs, all the way to the Greyhound terminal on South Weber Street.

The sidewalks here were wide and they had Starbucks and diners and coffee shops and pubs, but he kept going east on Pikes Peak Avenue past a school for the blind and a big park that had a massive memorial to all the fallen firefighters of America. He kept going east past a couple of charter schools and then, because it was getting dark, he changed direction and went north and west, past the US Olympic Training Center and finally back downtown to the Greyhound bus depot.

Light snow was falling now and a bus was idling in the parking lot with a sign above the driver's seat that said
LOS ANGELES
.

The driver himself was outside smoking with a couple of passengers, everyone coughing in the cold night air.

How easy it would be to slip onboard.

To take a seat at the back, to sit there with his beanie pulled down, pretending to sleep. In seven or eight hours they'd be in Nevada or Arizona. Either would be fine. And maybe he could make it undiscovered all the way to the terminal in downtown L.A.

He thought about it for a moment. Aunt Ines would take him in. He'd talk to her in Spanish about the school, about the other kids, about the silence, the gloves. She'd be freaked. She'd look after him. She'd give him rice and
beans, and his cousins Marco and Lucien would show him the gang signs and teach him to read the graffiti.

All he had to do was hop aboard.

He walked to the steps. Looked inside the bus. A dozen empty seats. One right at the back.

But after a full minute's hesitation, he shook his head.

No, it wouldn't do.

His mother would be scared out of her mind.

Even Walt would be upset.

And anyway, that's what a coward did—quitting school after one day because a couple of punk kids were mean to him.

The driver and the other passengers came back from their smoke break and got on board. The Greyhound's door closed with a pneumatic hiss.

Danny's cell phone rang. He was surprised. He didn't even know it worked in Colorado.

“Hello?”

“Where are you, Danny?” his mom asked, worried.

“I skated to Colorado Springs.”

“That must be ten miles away! Danny, what were you thinking?”

“It's downhill and I wanted to see it.”

“How will you get home? It's pitch-black out.”

“I'll skate home, I'll be fine.”

“Where are you, exactly? Your dad and I will pick you up.”

“No, don't do that.”

“It's snowing. How will you even skate in the snow?”

“Don't fuss. I'll be fine.”

“Where are you? Tell me exactly where you are.”

Danny sighed. It actually would be cool if his mother came for him. He was already freezing and it was uphill the whole way back.

The Greyhound bus pulled out, growling like a wounded dinosaur.

“I'm close to the bus station,” Danny said. “The Greyhound bus station. If you take Colorado Avenue all the way in, I'll see you.”

“We'll look it up on Google Maps. Wait for us.”

He hung up and waited. Between the snow clouds, stars hung low in the pollution-free Colorado sky except in that patch of night occupied by the void of Pikes Peak.

It was quiet. The streets were empty. The stores were all closed. He felt lonely. He hadn't seen Jeffrey all day. Wasn't seeing anyone, ‘cept for a random kid on a bike.

He picked up his board and hugged it.

The board was his transport but also his shield.

“Sunflower,” he said to himself.

He shivered.

“The shorts were probably a mistake,” he muttered to the streetlamps and the crescent moon.

He yawned.

The boy watching him yawned too.

It had been hard trailing Danny all the way from Cobalt and halfway around the Springs. Boring, too. Just for a
minute there he'd thought that Danny was going to jump on the Greyhound and take it wherever it was going. (Wouldn't be the first kid who attempted to run away from home after freshman day at CJHCS.) But he hadn't. He just called someone on his phone instead.

The boy leaned against the alley wall and rubbed his mittens and stamped his feet until an SUV pulled up and Danny got inside.

“That's that, then,” the boy said, and got out his own mobile phone. He speed-dialed a number. “I can't follow him anymore,” the boy said. “He's in a car. Going back to Cobalt, I suppose. But I wouldn't worry about him. He doesn't seem that interesting.”

He hung up the phone, tightened the scarf about his neck, turned on his bike lights, and began the long ride home.

Are they real? Sometimes he thinks they're not, that he made them up to serve his ends; other times he talks to them.

Like now.

“Out here, in the woods, I can feel you.”

“We can feel you, too.”

“Where are you from?”

“We're old.”

“How old?”

“We've been here forever. We watched the human race grow up. We walk with you. We're behind you, in your shadow, at your back where the sun is sprawled with the red gore of the horizon.”

“It's late. Let me do this quickly. I have to be getting back.”

“No, tarry awhile; watch with us. Look west. Watch as the sun drowns in the penumbra of the earth's curve … There. Do you hear the quiet? It's nearly our time. It's nearly our time and the creatures know and they are sure afraid.”

He trembles and turns on his flashlight.

The hikers are gone. The hunters are gone. The rangers are gone. Just a pair of flashlight beams and a scared reflection in the ice.

His hands are shaking. On his sleeve there's dried white spit.

“Get on with it,” the Master says.

A deep breath and then he's squeezing and the cat is clawing, hissing, drowning in the air.

The cat's eyes becoming his eyes.

And in a minute it's finished. He starts to tremble all over. “And this is still only the beginning,” he hears himself say.