I Am Phantom (Novella): Subject Number One (7 page)

“Nothing’s really stood out to me,” I said.

“What, are you looking for a sign?” My dad said,
waving at a driver passing us the other way. Probably a neighbor. Or anybody in
town, really. He knew everyone.

I watched a billboard for toothpaste, seriously,
toothpaste, flash by. “Kind of. No, not really. Maybe? I don’t know.”

He nodded like that had made an ounce of sense.
I wasn’t sure what he was thinking. Dad had gone to college straight out of
high school. After graduation he’d gotten a temporary position overseas, and
that had been where he’d met mom, in London, while taking a vacation break. So
he’d ended up staying in London for a while, she’d ended up marrying him,
they’d ended up moving to Maize, South Dakota, and both of them wound up with
yours truly. I don’t have much of an accent from my British side, which sucks
because I heard girls love guys with accents.

“You know, Drake,” my dad said in a voice that
meant he was in teaching mode. “College is a glorious time. It’s a place
to…to…invent yourself.” He glanced at me to see if I was listening. “I know
things have been a little hard for you the last few years,” Understatement of
the century, but yeah, we’ll go with that, “but it’s a time to change, you
know?”

“I was thinking out of state,” I said.

Our stoplight was coming up. “Not in state, like
we talked about?”

“I just feel…I think I need to get some
distance. I’d still visit,” I said quickly. “But, if I’m going to ‘invent’, I
need to really get away.”

My dad tapped his fingers on the wheel to the
rhythm of the truck. We passed the drug store and the hardware shop on the
right. “Drake, I’m proud of you for making that decision. And I’ll talk with
your mother, but if you can get a scholarship and we can find some way to pay
for this, which means actually
applying
,” he
gave me a look, “to schools, then I think that’s okay. You have any particular
college in mind?”

“Not yet,” I said. “But I’ll get a list soon.
Promise.”

“You do that. Bring them to me and we’ll talk
about it.” He waved to some more people, lounging around outside of their
truck. I saw the tubby and skinny poachers from this morning talking animatedly
to a group of men in camo clothes. Some of them were laughing at them. I ducked
my head until we passed.

“So…” my dad said, a smug smile creeping on his
lips. “Prom’s coming up, isn’t it?”

Thank goodness we were almost to school.
“It…might be,” I said.

“Got anyone special in mind?”

“Maybe,” I said evasively.

“Is she cute?”

I couldn’t help chuckling at the ridiculousness
of this conversation, and my dad gently smacked me on the back of the head,
grinning. “Yeah, yeah dad, she is.”

“Great! Well bring her on home once she says
yes. Let your old man embarrass you a bit.”

We pulled in to the drop off lot in front of
school and I leapt out before the conversation could get any more awkward. I
waved behind me. My dad rolled down the window.

“I’ll tell your mom to get out your baby
photos,” he called. “Especially the one of you naked in the—”

“Dad!” A couple people were staring. My dad
smirked, rolled up the window and zoomed off, the truck leaving a hint of black
smoke behind it.

I’d kill him later.

*
                                                         
*
                                                         
*

I wouldn’t say I have ‘friends’ at school. They
were more like acquaintances, satellite kids who hung around the fringes of the
cliques, interacting with everyone, but not pledging allegiance to any one
group. It hadn’t always been this way. Freshman year I’d been excited about
high school. I’d joined every club I could, hung out with kids all the time.
After school my friends and I would head in to town and hang out for hours,
just doing a lot of nothing.

But that had been near the beginning of
my…gifts.

Soon it became hard to go out anymore. I was
having too much trouble controlling my strength and speed. School was almost
unbearable to sit through, and I was often rushing off to the bathroom to choke
down another spasm of pain, or to look at my red-faced, blood shot eyes in the
mirror and try to convince myself I wasn’t going crazy.

Back then, the minute school had ended I was
gone, racing home or escaping out into the countryside to be alone and figure
out what to do with all these powers I suddenly had.

I got them under control eventually, but by the
time I had returned to being ‘normal’ the damage was already done. Kids didn’t
seem so happy to be around me. I had become that ‘weird’ kid and so I had
floated from one thing to the next, finding freedom in the moments outside
where I could be who I wanted to be. Whatever that was.

There were still thirty minutes before the bell.
Most kids hung out in the courtyard. I spotted Colin Fritz, a kid I sort of
knew. I took a seat at the bench on the other side of him. He looked up
acknowledged me.

“’Sup.”

“Nothing much.”

And…that was pretty much it. Conversation over.

I turned around and scouted the courtyard. I was
pretty sure Missy Vans hung out with some of her friends around the benches
near the art hall.

There she was!

I checked myself. I wasn’t sweating. Yet. My
clothing was straight, my hair as tamed as it would be. I could do this. I
could outrun deer, scare poachers, punch through bricks (I think. I’d never
tried, but I was probably strong enough to), asking her to prom should be a
snap.

Colin must have caught me looking and taking
deep breaths and realized what I was up to. He shook his head.

“Don’t do it, man.”

“Wish me luck!”

“Dude, Kent’s already—”

I crossed the courtyard. Maybe a little faster
than I should of. Missy looked up and jumped when she found me next to her all
of a sudden. The conversation in the group swiftly died, and the friends she
had been hanging out with turned haughtily to me.

“Hey,” I said.

Missy’s eyes flickered to the girls behind her,
who were making odd faces. A small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. She
was easily one of the prettiest girls in Maize; deep, chocolate brown hair,
flawless face, hands that didn’t have calluses like most of the kids who worked
on their family’s farms.

“Uh, hey. Can I help you?”

I took another deep breath. “I was wondering if
I could ask you something.”

Someone in the back coughed, which sounded more
like a barely concealed laugh. Missy fidgeted on the bench. “Like what?”

“Well, alone, actually.”

This time it was obvious it was snickering.

“Here’s fine,” Missy said.

“Oh, okay.” I tried to ignore the rest of her
friends who had started whispering behind her. I had known most of them
freshman year, but after, you know, the incident, I’d fallen out of touch. I
hadn’t wanted an audience, but I would take what I could get.

“So I was hoping, since prom is coming up and
all…if maybe you’d want to go with me?”

The whispering behind her ceased. Missy’s eyes
grew wider and wider until I was almost sure they’d pop out. This was obviously
not what she had been expecting.

“Prom?” Missy said, and giggled. She was
covering her mouth, small bursts of more giggles breaking through.

 
“Um,
no.” She shot a ‘can you believe this’ look behind her. “I’m already going with
someone,” more laughter, “So no, definitely not.”

My face was on fire. I was sure the entire
courtyard had stopped to witness my embarrassment. And what was worse, Missy
was
still laughing
.

I could take a hint.

My mouth was too dry to speak, so I hiked my
backpack up on my shoulders and turned away from them. The group exploded with
laughter.

And I had expected something else? Expected
something different from kids who practically hadn’t known me for the past
three years?

I rushed out of the courtyard and ducked out of
sight around the side of the school. Staying here the rest of the day seemed unbearable.
So I didn’t. The football field behind the school was empty, and beyond that
lay open fields, and then…freedom.

I started running.

The one good thing about living in Maize is the
abundance of lonely, empty, secluded back roads. Most of the roads are washed
out gravel or compacted dirt, and people only used them to get to their fields,
so you can go for hours without seeing another person.

That was my goal.

I wandered without a purpose, just weaving down
one road, and when that reached the end or came to a cross roads, I picked a
different one and headed that way.

By the time dusk came, and the insects let loose
with their singing, I had wound up with my legs hanging off the rail bridge
near the northern edge of town, where a grain train sometimes passed through. I
picked up the gravel between the rails and threw it into the Whetstone River
below, trying to hit whatever debris floated by in the turbulent water.

I kept replaying that morning in my head, and by
the end of the mind loop realized how dumb I’d been. I had taken a sudden leap
from obscurity in Maize, right to the top of the social food chain, and ended
up falling in to the chasm in between.

Even if she had said yes, even if I got back to
how involved I had been freshman year, that would have meant hanging out more
with kids, kids whom I couldn’t tell about my abilities. And it would only be a
matter of time before they found out, and then what? Nah, it was probably for
the better.

But it still sucked.

I sighed and tossed another rock. It was getting
late. I’d already fielded some texts from my dad, saying I had decided to walk
home. If I waited any longer he’d get worried.

I grabbed the railing and hefted myself up.

Headlights from the cross road washed over me
and I shielded my eyes, waiting for them to pass.

They didn’t. A second later, truck doors
slammed, gravel crunched under boots and raucous laughter came my direction. I
turned to go the other way off the bridge. It would take longer to get home,
but I could run now that it was nearly dark.

“Hey, Sinclair!”

I froze. Kids from school. I turned back towards
the headlights. My eyes had adjusted, and I could see four of them with halos
of light around their figures. A couple wore varsity jackets and carried
bottles. They circled me. I knew the lead guy, Kent Williams, super track star.

They must have been backroading. It was kind of
Maize’s go-to leisure activity. Pretty much the same thing I did; wander around
the miles of gravel road, except most people did it in a truck.

Kent and his buddies were being a little too
laugh-happy. They had been drinking, apparently.

“Heard you were asking my girl to prom today,”
Kent said.

 
Missy? So that had been what Colin was
trying to tell me. I mentally smacked myself. I should have guessed Kent would
have made his move already, but I hadn’t been in the social know, hadn’t been
paying enough attention.

His buddies snickered. A couple of them drew
closer behind me. This was quickly turning into a situation I didn’t want to be
involved in.

“Your name wasn’t on her,” I said.

Kent’s face crinkled to confusion. “What?”

Ugh. Idiot. They must really be wasted. “Never
mind. Sorry, Kent. I didn’t know you already asked her.” I tried to walk past
him, but he shoved me back. He wasn’t strong, at least not compared to me, but
I let him push me and pretended to stumble.

“I’m not done. You’re not sorry enough.”

I wasn’t stupid. I knew what was coming next.
And there wasn’t a single thing I was going to do to stop it. There were four
of them, but even after training myself to restrain my strength and speed, I
could mop all of them up in about five seconds.