Strange Country Day (11 page)

“That’s how confident we are about protecting you. It’s taken us a long time to put those measures in place.”

“One more question: Why can’t I control myself all the time?”

“That’s a little more complicated. As I told Alex, I’m still working on that. But I believe part of the reason is your fluctuating hormones. Theoretically, sometimes you can control them, sometimes you can accidently blackout an entire city block.”

Dad paused. “My turn. I have a favor to ask of you.”

Mom started shaking her head. “Martin, this is a bad idea.”

“It’ll be fine,” he said with a wave of his hand. “Sophi, I want you to turn that television on for me. But do it while sitting right where you are.”

She looked confused. Dad turned his chair and pointed to a small flat-screen TV mounted on the wall on the other side of the kitchen.

Sophi looked at me and started grabbing at her hair nervously. “No, Mr. Ptuiac, I can’t.”

“Dad, no. You already know what happened tonight,” I said.

“Are you sure about this?” Sophi asked my parents “What if I can’t control it?”

“Sure! Don’t even worry about breaking anything, we can replace it,” he said.

“I’m more worried about what I did to Jared.”

“I’m not,” Dad replied. “Some confidence might help you have some control.”

After a long pause, Sophi looked at the three of us and finally agreed.

As my parents moved their chairs aside, Sophi took a deep breath and exhaled, shaking her hands loosely as if she were warming up to play piano, then took another deep breath and lifted her left hand. She pointed her left index finger, her nail covered in purple nail polish, toward the television. Her brow furrowed, and her teeth clenched. I saw her hand start to shake. Nothing happened.

Her hand shook a little more … and then started to glow.

ZAP!

A small lightning bolt shot out toward the TV. We had to shield our eyes as it crackled and snapped. I heard the sound of light bulbs popping as the kitchen was plunged into darkness … except for the glow of the local newscast on the TV screen in the corner, which was coincidentally showing footage of the mayor’s speech at the homecoming bonfire, our team standing in the background.

The three of us turned to look at Sophi, who leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes.

I remembered what Dex said to me weeks ago. My girlfriend really was a witch.

“I’m telling you, I must’ve dropped it last night.”

Sophi swore she couldn’t find her cell phone and had likely left it at the so-called scene of the crime in the woods last night. At least it was easier to wind our way through the tangle of bushes and roots in broad daylight.

The clearing looked even bigger in the sunshine with the giant stump in the middle and the Christmas lights hanging over us, tied to the surrounding pine trees.

Sophi’s cellphone was nowhere in sight. We searched around the perimeter, near the stump, even in some of the low-hanging branches.

“Maybe one of the guys took it,” I suggested after Sophi shot me an exasperated look.

“Why don’t you ask them?” she shot back.

“Right.”

“I wasn’t kidding.”

Oh. I cupped my hands and called out to the woods, knowing full well they wouldn’t answer. “Did any of you pick up Sophi’s phone?”

Sophi hit me on the arm, which came along with a jarring shock. “I meant for you to call your dad!”

We heard the sound of rustling brush behind us. We turned around to see a hand sliding a cellphone into the clearing.

“Uh, thanks?” I responded. Sophi moved slowly to go pick it up, wary of who the hand was attached to. The bushes shook again and I mentally prepared to fight whoever it was.

Sophi bent over and picked up the phone, and shrieked when Dex jumped out at her with a shout.

“You’re welcome!” Dex said with a giant grin, his hands propped proudly on his hips.

“How did you find us? And thanks for the scare,” I said, giving him a small shove.

He pushed me back in retaliation. “I was coming over to see if you wanted to hang out, but I decided to follow you to your secret makeout spot instead.”

Sophi turned maroon, but Dex had moved on, looking up at the canopy of branches, thistles, and lights covering the area. “This is pretty cool. How’d you find it?”

“That stump over there used to be an enormous tree. They cut it down and brought it to City for the annual Christmas tree-lighting in midtown. This is actually somebody’s farm, but I’ve never seen the owner come here.”

“No bears?” I asked.

“I saw one once.” She looked at me and shook her head. I think I got the message—maybe she had used something extraordinary to scare it away.

Dex wasn’t listening. Instead, he examined one of the trees.

“You guys ever try to climb one of these?”

“No way.”

Dex ran his hand over the bark and looked up again. “Wait a minute. I bet I can.”

Before either of us could protest, he grabbed at a low-hanging branch and found a foothold. He started moving up the tree quickly. It looked to me like there weren’t too many places to grab, but he somehow found nooks and crannies.

“Dex! You’re gonna fall!” I called out.

“Don’t worry! I do this all the time!” He was over halfway to a huge branch.

With the same speed as his dart up the bookcase on Fresh Meet Friday, he reached the branch and shimmied onto his stomach while holding on with his arms and legs, like climbing the rope in gym class.

Instinctively, I rubbed the auto-splint covering my pinkie, thinking what could happen to Dex would be much worse. “You don’t want to be kicked off the team for messing around and getting injured, do you?”

He ignored me and pushed himself up so he was straddling the branch. “Watch this, guys.”

To our shock, he stepped up on the branch and balanced himself. He stood triumphantly, his hands on his tiny hips, grinning with every one of his teeth. He didn’t even wobble.

Sophi actually turned away, refusing to watch. “Come on! How are you going to get down?” I called out.

“I’m fine!”

CRACK.

The branch started wobbling under Dex’s weight. He looked around to figure out his next move. Sophi screamed.

CRACKKKKKKKK.

The next thing we knew, the branch snapped. And Dex fell, back first, his arms waving uncontrollably.

But in mid-air, he stuck his arms out and somehow got his feet to point toward the ground.

A second after the branch landed; so did he: on his feet, his knees bent, hands barely touching the ground.

I wanted to run over to him to see if he was okay, but I was too freaked out to move. I looked at Sophi and recognized the expression on her face. I got it a second later.

He was one of us.

“Guys, I’m fine,” he said, dusting off his jeans, almost too casually.

“Dexter!”

That wasn’t one of us. It was someone emerging from the thick woods behind Dex. The soldier in fatigues we’d seen last night dropped his rifle on the ground and came up to Dex, who turned around. He pulled off his helmet and goggles to reveal a dark-haired man with a scar across his left cheek.

“Dad?” Dex asked.

“You’re okay? Are you hurt?”

“What are you doing here?”

“That doesn’t matter. Are. You. Hurt?“

“I’m fine! Why are you here? And dressed like that?”

Dex’s dad let go of him. I could see he was visibly shaken up. “It’s a really long story.”

Dex looked at all three of us with his eyes more open than I’d ever seen them. His dad snapped into action. He reached out a gloved hand to me.

“Alex, really nice to officially meet you.” His squeeze nearly broke bones in my other hand. “And Sophi, right? Call me Frank.”

She nodded. We were both in a daze. He motioned toward the stump. “Guys, would you mind sitting?”

All three of us did, soundlessly.

He stood in front of us with his hands behind his back, pacing.

“Sophi, Alex, I know you’re aware of some of this, so bear with me, will you?”

“You know what he’s talking about?” Dex accused us.

“Dex, just listen,” Frank said.

***

I spent four years in the Marines, with the last two spent mostly in Afghanistan in the early 2000s. A roadside bomb shot shrapnel into my knee, left me with a scar across my cheek, and ended my tour of duty. I came home to Dex’s mom lost and aimless, sentenced to a life working behind a desk.

Through the grapevine, I heard about a project that sounded right up my alley, a top-secret group of scientists testing new technology with soldiers. I didn’t care about the risks—I just wanted to do something to help my country. If it’d heal the knee preventing me from protecting my great nation? That’d be a bonus.

The experiments didn’t do much, let alone fix his injury. Yet I had something thrilling to concentrate on—Dex was coming, only three months away from being born. That’s around the time when tests revealed my future son would develop a rare, potentially fatal blood disease. Another devastating blow.

I asked one of the friendlier scientists if he knew anyone who could help. The answer? They had just started work on experimental gene therapy.
Perfect. It turned out Dex was one of Dr. Ptuiac’s first patients. Months later, he was born without a trace of illness and everything seemed normal.

I was forever in Ptuiac’s debt. “Anything you need, doc, we’ll provide it,” I’d say over and over again. Over eleven years later, I received a handwritten note left on the windshield of my car: “Your family could be in danger.”

I really believe in your parents, Alex. They’re risking everything to continue what we helped start. There are others like that who needed their help, and they could use us now more than ever.”

I believed in them so much that I quit my job, moved us to a new town, and signed up to take shifts as one of the team’s bodyguards.

***

Things got difficult when Frank got to the end of his tale. He looked Dex right in the eye.

“ … When they did the experiments, they discovered the best way to cure your condition was to mix your genes with the DNA of a … cat.”

Dex turned to us, slowly. “You’re playing a prank on me,” he said, that high-pitched voice of his barely above a whisper.

“No, Dex. This is real. It’s why you have all these amazing abilities,” his dad said, laying a hand on his shoulder. “They have them too.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Dex said.

“We couldn‘t,” I said.

“No way. This isn’t true,” he replied. “Prove you‘ve got powers. Right now.”

Sophi looked at me.

“You’ve already seen mine. I basically have tiny robots inside my body that have helped me throw long passes a few times. Like in gym class,” I said. Dex actually gasped. “I can‘t do anything on command, but she can.”

I backed away and motioned for Dex and Frank to do the same. Sophi nodded and pulled up her sleeves as the three of us found a place underneath one of the trees.

She held her hands up toward the sky, her palms facing us. With that same look of determination she had at my parents’ house days before, she stared at the sky. Her hands started to shake and electricity began shooting from her fingertips. The Christmas lights above us flickered. After a few seconds of the spectacular light show, she put her hands down and looked at Dex.

“But … how did you … ” He stopped talking and stared at us. We looked back, dead serious. “That’s … that’s … ”

A huge smile broke across his face. “That’s
AWESOME
!” He started laughing. We started to laugh with him. He gave his dad and me a huge high five, hugged a very stunned Sophi, and started running around. “This is incredible!”

He ran to another tree at the perimeter of the clearing and scampered up again with ease. He climbed even higher than before. “Dex!” we all called, nearly at the same time.

“No! I’m part cat! This is what I’m supposed to do! If you don’t like it, call the fire department to get me down!” he yelled back with another laugh. He walked out on another wobbly branch, steadied himself, and launched backward, doing two backflips in the process.

Like before, he landed on his feet, a perfect dismount. “Nothing too it!” He started laughing again.

“Dexter, stop!” Frank scolded.

“If I showed Coach Schmick that trick, I’d start for the rest of the season,” he said.

“Right!” Frank said with a chuckle.

There’s was something about what he said that echoed in my head for an extra second. I felt a pit form in my stomach. “Dex, we can’t.”

“Can’t what?”

I couldn’t look him in the eye to see the disappointment I knew he’d feel.

“We can’t use these abilities to be good at football. We’d be no better than those pro athletes who use steroids.”

“That’s not true,” he replied.

“I know it means a lot to you that you made the team, but it’s wrong to use what we’ve got for ourselves,” I finished, sitting on the stump glumly.

Sophi piped up. “We have to keep looking like nothing is different. Someone will start to suspect something is weird. It probably won’t happen, but our cover could be blown.”

“Don’t you think it’s weirder that he can run faster than anyone on the team and can jump, like, ten feet high?” I shot back.

“Enough,” Frank interjected.

We all fell silent for a minute. Dex joined me on the stump.

“I can’t speak for what your parents want you to do, Alex,” Dex’s dad said. “But you’ve all got to be extra careful, even if that means keeping up appearances.”

“I don’t want to cheat either,” Dex said. “But I think it’s too late for us to change anything.”

“Not to take sides here, but your powers are uncontrollable. So it might be out of your hands,” Sophi said to me.

I sighed. “Okay, fine. I’ll keep it up in practice for now. But I don’t know what I’ll do if I get in a real game.”

Dex grinned. “That’s not going to happen for either of us until next year, at the very earliest. Coach doesn’t even look at seventh graders during games.”