The 6th Power

The 6th
Power

Justin David Walker

Copyright © 2015 by Justin David Walker

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing, 2015

ISBN 978-0-692-57938-1

Cover photograph by Linda Kloosterhof

For more information on this book and other writings by Justin David Walker, please go to:

www.jdwtales.wordpress.com

For Angie and Hope, who always believed.

Chapter 1

N
ot many people know this, but it’s kind of hard to think when you’ve got a big wad of bubblegum stuck to your eyebrow. Probably why it took me awhile to remember what day it was when I woke up that morning.

Right. First day of summer vacation. I’d just completed seven crummy years at Coralberry Elementary School, and if my life were normal, I’d have woken up all excited to spend the next few months at home. Instead, I sighed and felt my face. The gum was still sticky and warm, which meant that it hadn’t been there long. Still had a chance to get it off before it hardened into purple concrete.

I jumped out of my bed, but only made it halfway there before collapsing on the floor. My older brothers had tied my ankle to my bedpost. 

Thought about just staying there and going back to sleep, gum or no gum. But amazingly, I remembered that it wasn’t just the first day of vacation. It was also Wednesday, which meant that I had somewhere to be.

Hard to untie my ankle with just one hand, since the other was still sticky from the bubble-gum. Plus, Chet used to be a Boy Scout, so it took me some time. Shame I didn’t have a pocket-knife, but it didn’t seem wise to keep sharp bits of metal around. Didn’t want to give the twins any ideas.

Once I finally freed myself, I stood up and looked around my room, wondering if my brothers had done anything else. My door was still closed. Things didn’t look any different. Didn’t look like much at all. Bed, dresser, closet. No posters on the walls. No toys or books lying around. There wasn’t much point, after all.

Needed to get the gum off, so I grabbed the doorknob and immediately my non-sticky hand got all slimy. Great. The twins had left snot or spit behind. Oh well, damage done. I went ahead and opened my door.

There were pictures on the walls out here. My brothers slept right across the hall from me which, of course, made it easier for them to conduct their nightly visits. There was a large poster of A-Rod on their door, along with a smaller poster for a band called Balthazar’s Nostrils. The two posters summed up pretty much everything you needed to know about my brothers. Fortunately, I could hear Chet downstairs, using his cheerful “good son” voice, offering to pour Mom some cereal. I didn’t hear Robert, but that wasn’t unusual, and the twins were always together.

I stepped into the hallway and looked at the family portraits hanging there. Not many of Robert or I. Plenty of Chet. Even more of our little sister, Kiki, who I could also hear babbling away downstairs. Mom would be with her and Dad was long gone to work, and that was everyone accounted for, so why was our bathroom door closed? I stood there outside of it, immediately suspicious, and then looked down at myself. Duh. Couldn’t use my hands to open the door.

I thought again about going back to bed, not wanting to know what else the twins had cooked up for me, but there was that place I needed to be. Also, if I didn’t make an appearance at the breakfast table soon, Mom would start calling up the stairs. First she’d start with, “Nathaniel,” even though I preferred to be called Nate. Then if I didn’t come down within the next two seconds, she’d unleash my full name: “Nathaniel David Holland!” If I didn’t come downstairs that instant, the world would likely end.

I leaned against the wall, balanced on my throbbing ankle, and barely managed to turn the knob on the bathroom door with my other foot. There was, of course, something sticky on the doorknob, so I couldn’t put the foot back down. I tried to hop into the bathroom, but my ankle didn’t like that, so down I fell.

On the ceiling, almost exactly over my head, was a yellow sticky-note with a skull and cross-bones drawn on it. I laid there for a while and looked up at it as my eyebrow solidified. My teachers all say that I’m not living up to my full potential, but if Chet and Robert put as much effort and creativity into their school work as they did into making my life miserable, they probably would have skipped a few grades by now. Be graduated from high school. Out of the house. Out of my life.

I crawled over to the sink on my elbows and knees, trying hard not to let any of the substances that were on me get on the green linoleum, lest a mess be made that would bring forth my mother’s wrath.

The pink stepstool was sitting there. I stared at it and I finally started to get annoyed.

It was a reminder of one of Chet and Robert’s worst pranks. I had needed the stool to do my bathroom business for more years than I care to mention, and back when I was in the fourth grade, my brothers took a picture of me while I was standing there, washing my hands. They then placed the picture on the bulletin board at school. In the picture, I was wearing a pair of over-sized yellow ducky pajamas that my mother had picked up at a garage sale. So, afterward, I was quacked at pretty much every day for the next two years.

I shoved the stool aside and managed to stand up. Keeping my head down, I scrubbed my hands and feet until they were raw. When I couldn’t put it off anymore, I looked at myself in the mirror.

Short. Scrawny. Brown hair, brown eyes, brown freckles, blah, blah, blah. Same old wad of purple stuck to the same old eyebrow. Same old burning at the back of my eyes…

“No!” I whispered, gripping the sink. I wasn’t going to start crying already. I hadn’t even had my breakfast. I took a deep breath, let it out and picked up my comb.

My efforts to de-gum my eyebrow were pretty pathetic, but I figured if Mom paid as much attention to me as she usually did, I could make it through breakfast and be out the door before she noticed. Then I’d stow away in the baggage container of a Greyhound bus and make my way to… well, anywhere that wasn’t Coralberry, Connecticut.

Sure.

I cleaned off the doorknobs, got dressed, and headed downstairs, resisting the urge to walk right out the front door. That wasn’t really an option. My stomach gurgled, not out of hunger, and I walked into the kitchen.

Just like every other day, Mom was trying to feed Kiki some rice cereal. Just like every other day, Kiki wasn’t having it. She’s only nine-months-old, but she’s not stupid. The stuff looks like, and I imagine tastes like, paste. Kiki takes after Mom, with the blonde hair and the blue eyes. I don’t mind my sister. She’s the only one in the house who doesn’t hassle me. Fortunately, since Mom was focused on choo-choo noises and spoon airplanes, she didn’t look up at my eyebrow. That wasn’t good enough for the twins, though.

“Good morning, Nathan!” said Chet, glancing at Mom, hoping for a reaction. The twins were sitting there, already finished with breakfast, waiting for the finale of their little morning show. They didn’t look much alike. Chet was in his baseball uniform, all cleaned and pressed. Dark hair cut short and neat. He looked like he belonged on a little league recruitment poster. If you didn’t look at his eyes.

Robert, on the other hand, was just a mess. Greasy hair covered his eyes. Acne covered his face. The black concert t-shirt he was wearing looked like the same one he had on the day before. Smelled like it, too. He shoved an empty cereal bowl in my direction as I sat down.

Now, Robert could care less whether I had a good breakfast, so something was up. There also wasn’t a darn thing I could do about it. Mom would get on my case if I didn’t eat, and if I didn’t let the twins have their fun, there’d only be more drama later. With a sigh, I grabbed my box of Sugar Cocoa Fruity Bits. It was, of course, empty.

“Oops! Sorry, Nathan,” said Chet. He knows I hate being called Nathan. “I guess I ate the last of your cereal. You’ll just have to have some of Dad’s.” The look on his face changed from regret at depriving me of my favorite breakfast to excitement at the new opportunity that life had just presented me. The look in his eyes, though, stayed the same.

Dad’s cereal is made out of bran and garbanzo beans and nuclear waste. He says it makes him “feel good goin’ in and goin’ out.” Dad works in advertising, so he says a lot of clever stuff like that.

Still, as pranks went, this was pretty tame. I almost shrugged as I poured some cereal (which sounded like ball-bearings hitting the bowl), followed by some milk. I grabbed the sugar and dumped in nearly half the bowl. Anything’s edible if you put enough sugar on it.

But it wasn’t sugar.

The first bite was like rubbing a super-size order of french fries on my tongue. I coughed and spat garbanzo bits on the table, then started guzzling orange juice. Unfortunately, even Mom couldn’t ignore that. 

 “Nathaniel David Holland,” she said, “that is disgusting! What is wrong with you?” She peered at my face and I cringed.

“And what’s wrong with your eyebrow?”

The screen door leading out to the backyard slapped shut as the Holland twins left the building. I don’t know why they bothered. It’s not like I would tell on them. I tried that once, a long time ago. Chet woke me up in the middle of the night by sitting on my head and farting. This was before Kiki, and before Chet became a baseball superstar, so Mom and Dad actually paid attention when I told on him. My brothers were grounded for a week.

That night, though, I woke up to find a pacifier suspended a foot above my head, at the end of a hangman’s noose. The message was clear: “Don’t be a baby. If you tell again, you’re dead.”

I believed the warning. I still do. Fortunately, this morning Mom believed that I accidentally fell asleep with a piece of gum in my mouth. The lie cost me a lecture and a two-week candy ban. When she was done with an ice cube and a pair of scissors, I’d also lost most of an eyebrow. I did not get grounded, however, so I would live.

Before I could leave, though, Mom sat back down, picked up the spoon and said, “Would you load the dishwasher, please?”

I could tell by her tone of voice that she was annoyed at having to remind me about my chore, particularly since I should have taken care of it the night before. My cheeks burned as I went to work.

I was halfway through rinsing off the plates when Mom cleared her throat and said, “Oh, and if you have any plans for this summer, you can pretty much forget about them. After looking over your report card last night, your father and I agree that you’re going to be spending some time with a tutor. You’ve got to develop some better study habits before you go to junior high. I’m not sure how we’re going to pay for it, mind you, but…”

Great. Just great. It wasn’t my fault that I had a lousy memory. It wasn’t my fault that I studied for hours, for years, and I still couldn’t remember the stupid multiplication tables or capital of South Carolina. Now I wasn’t even going to get a summer vacation. Totally wasn’t fair. 

I took a deep breath and successfully resisted the impulse to slam the dishwasher shut. Mom caught me before I made it out the back door, though.

“What is today?” She didn’t bother to look at me. She just raised an eyebrow and swooped the spoon airplane through the air over my sister’s head.

I couldn’t afford to have any snark in my voice, so after another deep breath, I simply said, “Wednesday.”

“Correct,” she said, “which is…?”

Dang. I should know that. What did she usually bug me about on Wednesdays? “Uh…”

She sighed her usual sigh. “It’s garbage day. The truck will be here by eleven. Make sure the can is out to the curb before then. Okay?”

“Right.” I checked the clock. I had just enough time to make it downtown and back. If I hurried. Kiki shrieked as I pushed open the backdoor.

“Please eat your cereal, baby girl,” Mom said, exasperated.

“Why don’t you try putting some sugar on it?” I suggested as I walked out of the house.

Chapter 2

B
etween the gauntlet of goo from my brothers and the brow-beating from my mother, I was exhausted and it wasn’t even ten in the morning.

I should have been annoyed, furious even, by it all, but it was really just another day. The only difference was that, now that we were out of school, Chet and Robert would have even more time to pick on me. You know, when I wasn’t busy learning study techniques.

I walked past the big oak tree in our backyard, heading for the street, but I stopped at the edge of the lawn and looked around. I had somewhere to be, but I needed to keep out of the twins’ way, as much as I could. Of course, there was no sign of them. Chet had baseball practice and Robert would be going with him because Robert went everywhere that Chet went. He didn’t even need a leash. But just because I didn’t see my brothers didn’t mean that they weren’t out there somewhere, waiting for me.