The Impossible Coin (The Downwinders Book 2) (8 page)

“No, do it again, at least three
or four times,” Marty said. “Put your shoe in as far as you can without soaking
the upper part.”

Winn sighed and dipped his shoe
back into the water as the bowl refilled.

“If they’re like mosquitos,
they’re not that big of a deal,” Winn said. “I kill mosquitos all the time.”

“They’re only like mosquitos in
that they drink blood,” Marty said. “First off, they’re about the size of my
fist, and they’re very good at smelling ghost blood, even from miles away.
Second, they have six legs that are like centipedes, with pinchers on the end.
When they find some ghost blood, they latch on with the pinchers while they
feed on it, and if that happens to be you, they will latch right into your
skin.” He flushed the toilet again.

“You know how you get an itch
after a mosquito bite?” Marty asked.

“Yeah,” Winn said, shaking his
shoe around in the fresh water.

“Well, the pinchers on Z-flies
have a poison in them that causes the gifted part of you to become paralyzed.
You freeze right up. Your body can still move, but inside you, you can’t jump
in or out of the River. That’s when they start cutting the ghost blood off you
with their mouths. It feels like little razors, and at that point, there’s
nothing you can do to stop them.”

Winn shuddered and Marty flushed
the toilet again. “OK, the other foot.”

 “I’ve never heard of McGraves
being so bloody before,” Marty said.

“He thought I might be from some
Academy. I think he was trying to be extra scary.”

“What Academy?” Marty asked.

“Some place in Sedona,” Winn
replied. “He said kids keep bothering him to pass a test, and he’s sick of it.”

“Well, that would explain the
blood,” Marty called back. “If any of his blood got on them and they didn’t
know about it, they’d be tormented as they drove back upstate. That’s a good
trick. He’s a clever one.”

“And he swears a lot, more than
you,” Winn said, flushing the toilet and waiting for it to refill. “He said the
f-word a lot.”

“Sorry you had to hear that,”
Marty said. “Did he tell you anything about the coin?”

Winn related the things he’d
learned from McGraves as he finished washing up his shoes.

“Can we go now?” Winn asked.

“Yeah, sure,” Marty said. “In case
there’s any residue still on your shoes, we should make a beeline to my car.
When we get back to my place, I can wash your shoes with an agent that will
neutralize anything that’s left on them. I should probably wash your pants,
too, in case any got on them.”

“Even after all that rinsing in
the toilet?” Winn asked, incredulous.

“Even a drop is enough to draw a
Z-fly,” Marty said, holding the door open for Winn to exit. “And since we’re
not in the River, we won’t even see them coming. Let’s not stay out in the open
any longer than we need to.”

Winn raced out the door, and Marty
followed at a fast clip.

Winn opened the door to his
trailer. It didn’t look or sound like his mother had gotten out of bed yet, so
he quietly closed the door, not wanting to wake her. When he woke her up she
was usually crabby.

He searched through the kitchen
for a plastic bag, opening and closing drawers as quietly as he could until he
found one. Then he went to the refrigerator and removed a stick of string
cheese. He peeled it open and took a bite, then walked down the hallway to his
room.

Although a bathroom separated his
and his mother’s bedrooms, he still changed his clothes as quietly as he could.
The walls inside the trailer were extremely thin and not at all soundproof. He
carefully placed his shoes and pants into the plastic bag and he tied it up
tight. He put on fresh clothes and an older pair of sneakers that had holes in
them.

Just as he was preparing to pick
up the bag and leave his room, he heard his mother walking past his bedroom
door in the hallway. Since she was just waking up, he knew she’d go to the
kitchen, make a pot of coffee, and smoke a cigarette while it brewed. He worried
that if she saw the plastic bag he was carrying, she might question him, and he
didn’t want that. He placed the clothes into his backpack and walked out.

His mother was sitting at the table
in the kitchen, wearing a robe. Her hair was messed up, and she started to
press it down as she saw Winn.

“Hey,” he said, nodding to her as
he headed to the trailer door.

“Hey,” she said back, glanced at
him, and then lit up a cigarette.

He opened the door and walked out,
closing it behind him. He stood for a moment on the steps, his back to the
door, waiting to see if she was going to come to the door and ask where he was
going, or what he was doing.

She didn’t come.

He stepped down and began walking
toward Marty’s. If he had to choose between a dad like Brent’s or a mom like
his, he’d choose his mom. She wasn’t mean like Brent’s dad, and she usually let
him come and go whenever he wanted.

He just wished it didn’t feel so
much like being ignored.

▪
▪
▪

After he dropped his clothes off
at Marty’s, he decided to check on Brent and see why he hadn’t shown for their
trip to the mansion. He walked past his trailer and on toward Brent’s. He saw
that Jeanette was out, sitting in her chair, with Ears at her feet. She had
spotted him through her thick glasses.

“Come here,” she called to him as
he walked past. “Get your scrawny ass over here!”

Winn stopped to look at her. He
glanced up and down the driveway, hoping someone would be there, Brent maybe,
and he could use it as an excuse to ignore her. There was no one.

“Come here, I want to show you
something,” she said, waving him over with her hand. He walked toward her.

She was wearing a faded floral
print dress that came down to her knees. He could see that she’d bandaged up
her calves, and there were discolored splotches on the bandages where the sores
from her legs had seeped through.
Either that or she spilled something on
them,
Winn thought.
They’re disgusting!

As he approached, she held out her
arm, showing him a large scab. “This is where he bit me,” she said. “See what
he did?”

“Who?” Winn asked, stopping about
three feet from her.

“Come over here so you can see
it!” she insisted. “You can’t see if from there.”

Winn took a couple of steps
forward and stopped within kicking distance of her legs. He saw Ears raise his
little rat head from his paws to look at him. He sniffed a couple of times and
lowered his head. His eyes looked cloudy, and Winn wondered if he could see
anything at all.

“The damn dog bit me!” Jeanette
said, thrusting her arm at him. “Went right through the skin, made me bleed!”

“Why’d he bite you?” Winn asked.

Jeanette looked at him through her
thick glasses, giving him a quizzical look that told Winn she hadn’t been
prepared for that question.

“He’s a damn dog, you hobbledehoy!
That’s what they do!”

“I don’t think Ears would bite
you,” Winn said. “He’s too old. He doesn’t have the strength.”

“Well, he did! What do you think
this is? Aren’t you smart enough to believe your own eyes?”

“Ears just doesn’t seem that
mean,” Winn replied.

“Well, he is! He’s a ferocious
little thing, and you have to know how to deal with him. I bit him back.”

“You did not,” Winn said, smiling.

“I sure did. Bit him right on the
leg, made him bleed too, just like me!”

Winn studied her face to see if
she was lying. She didn’t crack a smile. He knew Jeanette was crazy, but she
also seemed normal much of the time. She might be pulling his leg; or, she
might have really bit Ears’ leg. Woman bites dog. He couldn’t tell, and she
wasn’t tipping her hand.

“That’s animal cruelty,” Winn
said. “You can’t bite dogs.”

“Well, what he did to me was
cruelty,” she said. “I feed him and bathe him and clean up all his shit, and
what do I get for it? Bit in the arm!”

“I gotta go, Jeanette,” Winn said,
backing away.

“Wait, I need your help.”

“What?”

“I want you to help me pick off
this scab. I want to see what’s underneath. It might be infected.”

Winn felt his stomach churn. “I’m
not going to do that, Jeanette.”

“If it’s infected, I’m gonna need
extra medicine, so I gotta know.”

“I’m not going to pick off the
scab, Jeanette. That’s too gross. No way.”

“You’re kinda mouthy for a little
prick!”

“Bye,” Winn said, turning from
her.

“You don’t help someone by
abandoning them,” she called after him. “Coward!”

He wasn’t sure, but as he walked
away from her, he thought he heard her laughing quietly.

She’s messing with me,
entertaining herself,
Winn thought.

He walked behind Brent’s trailer,
pulled the wooden crate from under it, and gave the tap on Brent’s window. He
waited a minute, and gave the tap again. No response. Brent usually came right
to the window if he was in his room. Winn didn’t want to tap again and attract
the attention of Brent’s father.

He jumped down from the crate and
slid it under the trailer, wondering where Brent might be. Their car was in the
driveway, so they hadn’t gone anywhere. Brent’s bike was locked up at the back
of the trailer.

He wandered home, unsure what he’d
do with the rest of his day. When he passed by Jeanette’s he saw that she’d
gone back inside, and he was grateful not to have to interact with her again.
Once he reached his trailer, he went in and began rummaging for food.

His mother emerged from the back
bedroom, now dressed in a tank top and cut offs. She’d had her morning doses of
caffeine and nicotine, and she was ready to face the world.

“There’s no food in here to make
sandwiches with,” Winn complained. “We’re out of peanut butter.”

“There’s cheese,” his mother said.
“Make a cheese sandwich.”

“That’s gross,” Winn said.

“You eat grilled cheese
sandwiches, what’s the difference?” she asked.

“Uh, grilled?”

“Well, you can grill a sandwich as
easily as I can,” she said. “So don’t tell me there’s no food. And by the way,
your gay little friend came around this morning, banging on the door, waking me
up. I want you to tell him to not knock on our door so early in the morning.”

He knew she was talking about
Brent. It pissed him off when she called him ‘gay,’ because he knew she was
doing it to just to get a rise out of him.

“Will you stop calling him gay?”
Winn said, putting two pieces of bread in the toaster.

“That kid’ll be a real knob jockey
someday, mark my words,” she said, sitting down and clicking on the TV.

“I don’t care, he’s my friend,”
Winn said, pulling butter out of the fridge. “And he’s a better person than
most of the men you bring home.”

Winn saw her shoot him a glance,
but she didn’t reply. They both knew it was true.

He buttered his toast and
sprinkled sugar and cinnamon on them, then sat with her as she watched an infomercial
selling a flat piece of metal that melted ice.

“You don’t normally wear those
shoes,” she said, observing his feet.

“Gotta clean the other ones, I got
them dirty with…” He stopped himself. He was about to say ‘ghost blood,’ but he
knew it would send her into a fit.

“With what?”

“…with this really sticky mud. I’m
going to wash them off with the hose later.”

“Don’t ruin them,” she said,
lighting up another cigarette. “Those shoes have got to last you all year.”

Winn had tried to talk to his
mother about his gift, his ability to enter the River, when he first discovered
it last year. She seemed to know what he was talking about, but she wouldn’t go
into details with him, and the more he brought it up, the more she shut him
down. That’s when he learned that Marty knew about the River, and was willing
to answer his questions about it. Marty explained that it was inherited. Winn
figured it came from his mom, but for some reason she wasn’t willing to tell
him about it.

Winn brought it up with her once
since that initial encounter, and it hadn’t gone well. She got angry and told
him to never bring it up again. He hadn’t, with her. Whenever he had a question
about it, he went to Marty.

Part of him wished his mom would
open up to him about it, but he knew that was unlikely. She was always distant.
When he saw how other moms treated their kids, he was surprised at how involved
they were, how they pestered his friends always wanting to know where they
were, what they were doing, and who they were doing it with. Winn’s mom never
asked those questions. She didn’t seem to care.

 “I got another early shift today,
I’m covering for Michelle again, so I won’t be home until after two,” she said,
tapping her cigarette ash into a ceramic ashtray, so full of ashes and butts
you couldn’t see the picture of Saddleback Mountain on the bottom. “You know
the drill.”

“Yeah,” Winn said. “I know the
drill.”

The drill meant three things:
keeping noise in the trailer down to a reasonable level so neighbors wouldn’t
complain (like they had a month ago, when someone had called the cops because
he was playing music too loud), being inside by ten, and lights out by
midnight. She claimed she had spies in the trailer court who would report to her
if they saw him out later than ten or the lights on after midnight, but he
didn’t believe her. He routinely stayed up later than midnight with the light
on in his bedroom, and nothing had come of it.

As he finished his cinnamon toast,
his mother rose from the chair and smashed out her cigarette, then walked down
the hallway to the bathroom. He heard the shower start up.

Brent must have come by after
he found me and Marty gone,
Winn thought.
He’s always late. He’ll be
pissed that we left him, but it’s his own fault. I told him he had to be on
time.

He walked to his room and pulled
his Walkman from his bed, then went out the trailer door, heading for the
treehouse. It was time for some Dandy Warhols and to think over what McGraves
had said to him.

Since his mother was in the
shower, he knew she wouldn’t be able to hear him climbing on the trailer, so he
didn’t worry about being quiet. He reached the top and climbed to the branch,
then up the trunk to the platform. As he brought his head up above the platform’s
height, he realized Brent was there already, lying down. He looked like he was
sleeping, with his head turned away from him.

Winn pulled himself up onto the
platform and kneeled next to Brent. “Before you give me a speech about ditching
you,” he said, “remember that I told you you had to be on time. We waited an
extra half hour for you before we had to go!”

Brent rolled his head to face him,
and Winn gasped. Brent had a black left eye, the lid swelling shut, and a cut
across the bridge of his nose, half covered by a bandage that was soaked
through with blood.

“What happened?!” Winn said,
shocked by the damage on Brent’s face.

“My dad,” Brent said. “I would
have been on time, but he stopped me. Told me I couldn’t go. I was really angry
at him. Later, I snuck out. By then you’d already left.”

“You went by my house, right?”

“Yeah, wanted to see if you might
be there, even though I knew you weren’t. Woke up your mom. She didn’t seem
happy about it.”

“She wasn’t,” Winn said.

“So I went back home, hoping I
could sneak back in,” Brent said, tearing up. “He caught me.” He began to cry. It
embarrassed him, so he rolled to his side, away from Winn.

“Oh, Brent, I’m sorry,” Winn said,
feeling like he wanted to cry, too. At that moment he hated Brent’s father more
than he’d ever hated any human being. He wanted to jump down from the treehouse
and march over to Brent’s trailer, haul his father out, and beat him up, right
on the driveway, in front of the whole trailer court. He knew that was
impossible. Brent’s father would just do the same thing to him that he did to
Brent.

“How bad is it?” Winn asked.

Brent turned back, allowing Winn
to inspect his face, his body jerking with a sob now and again.

“I saw in a movie you’re supposed
to put ice on a black eye,” Winn said. “Wait right here.”

Winn hurried down from the
treehouse and back into the trailer. He heard the shower still running. He
opened the freezer and looked for ice – there was none. Thanks to his dislike
of peas, there was a frozen bag of them sitting inside, a good year past their
expiration date. He grabbed the bag and left, racing back up the trailer and
onto the platform.