Jack's New Power (16 page)

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Authors: Jack Gantos

BOOK: Jack's New Power
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“Zelda who?” I blurted out. “Do we know her?”
“Maybe you're not a nut,” she said. “Maybe you're just hopelessly stupid.” She pushed me away and I tripped over a potted palm and plunged into the croton hedge. I landed on my stomach and spit up some Coke on my hand. I had to wipe it off on my little piece of ripped pocket.
What am I? I asked myself. Sick? Stupid? Or insane?
 
It was Monday and I was back at school, slumped down in my seat. I was exhausted. That nightmare had returned. As soon as I fell asleep, I was paralyzed. My French doors opened and a boy entered the room. I tried to move but couldn't. His face was a blur. He reached for my hands. I tried to scream. Instead, I stopped breathing. I knew it couldn't be true, but I thought I held my breath for the rest of the night.
Usually, Monday meant a lecture on how we didn't study enough, followed by a killer quiz. But this Monday was different. Mr. Cucumber started the day by handing out copies of a photograph of Wade Block. He looked exactly like the drawing I'd made. I thought of my grandfather's story about the double and I got goose bumps again. Maybe I should reschedule the appointment with Betsy, I thought. She knows a lot more than I do. I suddenly felt wide awake.
“This boy has been missing for an entire week,” Mr. Cucumber said. “Do any of you know something about him?”
I raised my hand.
“Yes, Henry?”
“His bicycle is missing,” I said. “He was last seen at the Rockley Movie Theatre.”
“Any fool who reads the paper knows that,” he replied harshly. “Do you know anything new about him? Have you seen him?”
I didn't tell him I had seen him in my mind and that I had drawn a picture of him. And that ever since he was missing I was haunted by a nightmare and was being driven insane. After his reply to the
first
answer I gave him, I figured if I told Mr. Cucumber what was really on my mind he'd turn the whole class against me.
“There is a reward for finding the boy,” continued Mr. Cucumber. “If you know anything, tell your parents and call the police. And,” he stressed, “if you do find him and get the reward, I expect you to donate it to the school.”
Everyone groaned. Yeah, I thought. So we can hire a teacher instead of a jailer.
He placed the photograph down on his desk and picked up his math book. “Now,” he boomed. “Let us review our metric tables.”
During lunch I snuck around to the back of the school building. There was an empty swimming pool in the shape of Barbados. At one time it must have been beautiful. Now it was filled with dried leaves and dirt and little balled-up pieces of notebook paper. I opened my lunch bag and pulled out a small divining rod. Actually, it was a slingshot, but I had taken off the rubber straps. Still, it was the same Y shape. As Mr. Branch had said to me, “The rod is just the needle on the compass. The true power is in the man.” If that was the case, I could make a rod out of a wire coat hanger. But if Mr. Branch used wood, I'd use wood. I figured he hadn't told me
everything
he knew in one sentence.
I walked down the pool steps into the shallow end, which was at the bottom of the island. I closed my eyes and concentrated. I had used a Ouija board before and thought I should ask a question, then discover the answer as I walked. “Wade Block, where are you?” I murmured. I held the rod out in front of me like Mr. Branch and took a step forward. I slowly marched up the island into the deep end. I turned and marched back. I didn't feel any downward tug. I asked the question again. “Where are you?” I rolled my eyes up into my head and paced up the middle of the island. Nothing. I turned, and as I walked back, I felt my hands jerk downward, just like getting a strike on a fishing rod. It scared me so much I yelped and jumped into the air.
When I landed, I stared down at the spot which was marked by the shadow of the rod. With my shoe I kicked away the leaves.
Castle Rock
was painted on the bottom. It
was a tiny town on the edge of the Castle sugarcane plantation. Maybe he was kidnapped and hidden up there. It was pretty remote. Or maybe he was injured and no one could find him. I could save him. I'd be a hero. Then everyone would know that I had the
power
and I could start charging for finding stuff.
I went back to the classroom and studied the wall map. I took out my diary and wrote down the roads I'd have to take, then left the room before Mr. Cucumber returned and quizzed me on kilometers, sea-level elevations, latitude and longitude. He was always thinking up ways to use real life for test questions.
After school I decided to take the west coast road up the island and stop in at Sandy Lane to see if Mr. Branch had located Captain Kidd's treasure.
I rode right up to the beach and walked my bike along the sand. Mr. Branch was standing on the edge of one of the holes while mindlessly twirling that little Bible through his fingers like a magician. All the lights and digging equipment were gone. Next to the NO TRESPASSING sign was a tourist with a metal detector. Mr. Branch sneered at him.
“How'd it go?” I asked.
He turned and recognized me. “Witness it with your own eyes,” he said sadly.
I looked down into the hole. The sides were lined with plywood and shored up with two-by-fours to keep the loose sand from caving in. It was about fifty feet deep and half filled with water.
“Saltwater,” he said. “It's like rubbing salt in a wound. This is a puzzlement to me. This is the first time I haven't found what I'm looking for. I guess God didn't mean for
me to find a treasure that was ill-gained. I guess that was it. For punishment he took my power away.”
I looked down into the other two holes. There was nothing but water. “Maybe you're just really good at finding water,” I said, trying to sound positive.
“Not so,” he replied. “I'm a finder. I find things. Anything. Like that missing boy. I'm going to find him for the family. God will restore my power when I put it to good use.”
“I read about him in the paper,” I said. I pulled the picture out of my pocket and unfolded it. “We got this in school. There's a reward.”
“Reward?” he asked. “How much?”
“I don't know,” I said.
He lifted the paper out of my hand and stared at Wade Block. He closed his eyes and placed the palm of his hand on Wade's face. He threw his head back and concentrated on something only he could see. “What do you know about this?” he asked and stared down at me with his wide eyes bugged out like a horror-movie madman. “Tell me!” He put his hand on my shoulder. “I
feel
that you know something.”
“Nothing,” I replied. I backed away from him. “I don't know any more than you do.”
“You're lying,” he snapped.
I couldn't tell him about the drawing and the nightmare. “I have to go,” I said.
“Well, I have to find him,” he insisted, and poked himself so hard in the chest I thought he was going to knock himself backward into the hole. “I must prove I've got my power back. That Captain Ward called me a fraud. He
can't call me that. God gave me the power to find things. If he calls me a fraud, it's like calling God a fraud.” He was shouting.
I turned and picked up my bike. “Good luck,” I said. I walked to the road and took off for Castle Rock. I glanced over my shoulder to make sure he wasn't following me like some fiendish stalker with a machete the length of my arm. But he wasn't that kind of a stalker. What really scared me about him was the same thing that scared me about Betsy. That both of them could just look at me and see into my own mind, spy on my thoughts and feelings, and read me like a book.
I wanted to know if I had the power to see and feel things that other people could not. Once I ordered a pair of those X-ray glasses advertised in comic books. But they were fake. I couldn't see anything past my nose. Even back then I knew I couldn't get power from a gimmick. Power was drawing that boy's face in my diary
before
I saw the photograph. I hadn't figured out what the nightmare meant yet.
I pedaled as hard as I could against the traffic. The roads were narrow, and every time a car passed by, the wind pushed me toward the open gutters. If I fell in, I'd crash and be covered with sewage. I passed rows of wooden chattel houses and hotels. I continued up past Alleynes Bay, Read's Bay, and Mullins Bay. I looked at my watch. I was making good time. If I found the kid I'd be a hero and wouldn't have to worry about when I got home. If I didn't find him, I'd have to pedal like a fiend to get back in time for dinner.
At Speightstown I turned up Highway 1 toward Castle Rock. There was less traffic, but the roads were steep and uneven. The cane was low. Without water the crop was stunted. At Portland Plantation I stopped by a store and drank from the tap. It tasted rusty. I was tired but didn't have time to rest. I hopped on my bike and kept going. After Diamond Corner I took a left toward Castle Plantation. Castle Rock was a town made out of old slave quarters. I pulled over and stopped. I reached into my backpack and took out the little divining rod and held it in my hands. “Wade Block,” I murmured. “I'm here to find you. Speak to me.”
I waited a moment. Nothing. “Speak to me,” I said. Nothing happened. I put the rod away. Then I headed into Castle Rock. There was only one road. “Speak to me,” I whispered. I waved to an old couple sitting on a porch. They waved back. Then I saw the boy. Someone had painted the image of a soccer player on the side of an aboveground water tank. But they had only painted his outline in big white brush strokes. A number 8 was painted on his chest. The soccer ball was at the tip of his foot. The face was a white smudge, as if someone had painted a face they didn't like and tried to rub it off with a rag. When I saw it, I knew it was my nightmare. I could feel my skin crawl. The hair on my head became spiky. My muscles stiffened up. Get out of here, I said to myself. Before you're so paralyzed you fall over and can't roll out of the way of a car. I stared up at that smudged face and felt my throat tighten. I jerked my head away, stood up on my pedals, and sped back through Castle Rock. I took a left on Highway
2-A and cut through the middle of the island, past acres of cane fields and row after row of royal palms. Wade Block, I thought, you're scaring me to death.
I got home in time for dinner. Dad was in a great mood. “I ran into Captain Ward,” he said. “He was a mess. He was down at the Pig's Ear having bacon, eggs, and beer for breakfast. He'd been up all night. They didn't find a cent. It cost them a bundle to rent the backhoe for the night, but he was laughing about it. Said it was a great time. When the sun was rising they sat on the shore singing, Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum. I guess if you have the money, you can spend your life digging in the sand like a kid with a bucket.” He was smiling. I knew he wished he was there with them. This was just the kind of adventure he'd go for. Me too. We both liked to find things. Maybe we would have been pirates together if given the chance. As it was, we were already living like pirates, landlocked pirates, moving from different towns and countries, searching for the easiest way to earn a quick fortune.
 
That night Betsy woke me up. When I opened my eyes, she had her hand damped over my mouth.
“You're having a nightmare,” she said. “Calm down.”
It had returned. I thought I had prepared myself against it. I had stacked a bunch of empty tin cans by the French doors, so if they opened, they'd make a huge noise. Plus, I fell asleep with a flashlight in my hand. It was still there. I was so paralyzed with fear I couldn't turn it on.
“I need to work on you,” she said. “Before it's too late.”
“I'll be okay,” I said.
“It's your funeral,” she replied. “I really
don't
know
what's wrong with you, but you'd better get outside help.”
I need to find Wade Block, I thought. I won't rest until he shows up. When she left the room, I sat up in bed with the light on. I felt a little better. Betsy didn't really know what was wrong with me. She was brainy, but didn't have that much
power.
I was still awake when the newspaper arrived. The Wade Block story had made it onto the front page. It was announced that Mr. Branch had entered the search. He had already found the bicycle in Holetown. He was quoted as saying he expected to find the boy shortly. I turned the page to continue the story. There was that photograph of Wade Block wearing a soccer shirt with a number 8 on the front. I got goose bumps the size of bee stings. My hair felt like needles digging into my scalp. I threw the paper down and ran to my room.
After I got dressed I taped my divining rod to the top of my bicycle headlight and took off down the road. I wondered what might happen if the rod suddenly pointed down. Maybe I'd fly over the handlebars.
Nothing scary happened until I arrived at school and Mr. Cucumber gave us a pop quiz. He had devised a set of Wade Block math problems to test us on kilometers and geometry. One of the questions read: If Wade Block was riding his bicycle in a perfect circle at ten kilometers per hour and the police were driving in a perfect isosceles triangle where all points touched within the circle, at what speed would the police have to travel to intercept young Block at the third point?

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