The Presence (9 page)

A scenario, she knew, that was possible, but unlikely, given the location.

But as she kept digging, patiently cleaning the skull with dental tools and brushes, she began to realize that it didn’t look like a primate at all.

What it most closely resembled, in fact, was some of the early hominids.

That, of course, was impossible.

First, early man hadn’t existed in Hawaii.

Second, this particular site hadn’t existed at the time of early man.

Therefore, the skull had to be something else. Whatever it turned out to be, she was determined to have a perfect scientific record to back up the assertions she would eventually make.

She took one more photograph, and as the camera began rewinding, she stood, stretched, and took a deep breath, wincing as her nostrils filled with the sulfurous odor that seemed to be hanging over the site more strongly than usual today. She was reloading the camera when she heard Rob’s voice.

“Kath? Got a visitor who wants to meet you!” Looking up, Katharine saw Rob step into the clearing. Behind him was a second man the same age as Rob. “This is Phil Howell. He’s the head stargazer up at the top of the mountain. Phil, this is Katharine Sundquist.”

Phil Howell stepped forward, extended his hand, then lifted his brows as he got a whiff of the scent of rotting eggs. “My God! What are you excavating with, sulfuric acid?”

Katharine shook her head. “Just deposits around an old vent. But it seems to be worse today.”

The astronomer frowned. “Are you sure?”

Something in his tone set off an alarm in Katharine’s head. “I think so,” she said. “I assume it has to do with the rain we had this morning.”

“Or maybe the earthquakes opened up a pocket of gas,” Howell replied.

Katharine’s gaze shifted worriedly to Rob. “Earthquakes?” she repeated. “What’s he talking about?”

“The volcano,” Phil Howell said before Rob could speak. “Looks like it’s getting ready to kick up again.”

Katharine’s heart skipped a beat and she looked at Rob again. “You said it was extinct!”

“It is,” Rob assured her. “He’s talking about Kilauea on the Big Island.” He could tell by the look on her face that Katharine wasn’t convinced. “Tell her, Phil. She obviously doesn’t believe me.”

Katharine listened silently as Phil Howell explained the volcanic movement under the Big Island. “It’s not just the earthquakes,” he finished. “If it really gets going, it spews so much dust into the air you can’t see anything even if the scopes are holding still.” He paused. “Makes you wonder if mountaintops are really the best places for observatories, doesn’t it?”

Katharine made no reply, but as she began showing the site to the astronomer, she found herself glancing toward the hole in the side of the ravine that marked the ancient volcanic vent. All but lost in the tangled vegetation of the rain forest, it certainly looked harmless enough.

As she tried to concentrate on what she was saying, she kept thinking that the smell of sulfur was growing stronger.

Should she mention it to Rob and Phil? But no, they seemed unconcerned.

It must be her imagination.

It had to be.

The hostility from the two guys on the bus followed Michael around all day long. Wherever he was, they seemed to be there, always together, always watching him. During the break between his last two classes, they’d shoved him up against a locker.

“Another hour,” the bigger one had growled. “Then you’re dead meat,
haole.”
So far, though, they hadn’t actually
tried anything, and if they were planning to wait for him after school, they were going to have to wait a long time, for today Michael was going to do something he’d never done before. Today, for the first time in his life, he was actually going to go out for a team.

He made up his mind during gym class. He’d been checking his breathing all day, and there hadn’t been any problems. In fact, he felt better than ever. “Just wait,” Josh Malani told him as they’d jogged around the track. “Sometimes the trades die down, and they start burnin’ the cane fields, and the mountain on the Big Island goes off. Man, you could choke to death around here!”

But his breathing had been deep and easy, and even after he’d finished three laps, he barely felt it. So when he’d seen the track team practice schedule posted on the bulletin board in the locker room, he decided. Today was the day.

Now, as the final bell sounded and he left his last class, instead of heading out to the side of the school where the buses—and the two guys—would be waiting, Michael went the other way, toward the locker room.

Stripping off his clothes, he put on his gym shorts, still damp from P.E. class that morning. He laced up his shoes carefully, making sure they weren’t so tight his feet would start swelling before he even got warmed up, then left the locker room and trotted out to the field, where the track team was already starting their warm-up calisthenics.

Should he go over and join them, or warm up by himself?

What if he went over just like he was one of them, and then didn’t make the team when he tried out? Better just to take a couple of laps around the track.

He finished the first lap and was a hundred feet into the
second when he felt a sharp elbow dig into the ribs on his right side.

“What do you think you’re doin’, jerk?” a familiar voice said.

Michael glanced over without turning his head. It was the bigger of the two guys from the bus. And he was wearing a track suit.

Saying nothing, Michael kept running.

The other boy, towering half a foot over Michael, shortened his stride enough to match Michael’s pace. “Can’t you talk, asshole?”

Michael remained silent, but kept running, concentrating only on his pace, determined neither to change it nor to break stride. If the guy was going to shove him off the track, so be it. But he wasn’t going to quit.

They rounded the last turn. As Michael dropped his pace back to a walk and approached the coach, the other boy kept going, stepping up his own stride with an ease that made Michael question whether he shouldn’t just head back to the locker room, take a shower, and go home. Then he saw the other guy from the bus, his lips curled into a contemptuous sneer, as if the guy knew exactly what was going through his mind.

With perfect clarity, Michael knew that if he walked off the field now, he’d hate every single day he had to come back to Bailey High. Taking a deep breath, he walked up to the coach. “I’m Michael Sundquist,” he said. “I want to try out for the team.” He felt the coach look him over with appraising eyes, and easily read the doubt in his face. “I’m a sprinter.”

“I think I can make up my own mind about what you can do,” the coach said. The team, except for the one guy who was still running around the track, laughed, and Michael
tried to ignore the burning in his face. But when he didn’t flinch from the words, the coach relented. “Okay, what do you want to try?”

“The hundred meter, or the two hundred,” Michael offered.

“How about the four hundred?” the coach asked.

Michael bit his lip, then decided he’d better tell the truth. “I had asthma. I’m not sure I can last that long, full-out.”

The coach raised a brow, but when he spoke, his voice carried no note of judgment. “Okay. I’ll tell you when to go.” Pulling a stopwatch out of his pocket, he set it, then handed it to the second of the guys from the bus. When the timer had reached the mark a hundred meters down the track, the coach nodded to Michael, who moved out to the starting blocks. “On your mark.”

Michael dropped to a crouch, putting his left foot against the block.

“Set.”

Michael tensed, ready for the coach to utter the final word.

And waited.

What on earth was going on? Was the coach pulling some kind of joke on him? His legs began to ache. Jaw clenched, determination tensing every muscle, he crouched low to the track. His left foot still braced, he remained tensed to take off. Then, as he heard feet approaching from behind him, he understood.

Sure enough, just as the guy who’d elbowed him a few minutes ago passed him, the coach shouted, “Go!”

As Michael launched himself off the block, he could see the bigger boy, already ahead of him, increase his pace. Swell! Not only was he going to have to try to
catch up with someone who had a head start and was bigger, but he was going to have to eat dust, too.

Well, if that was the game they wanted to play, fine!

Sucking air deep into his lungs, Michael lunged forward, hitting his full stride in the first two steps, then pouring on as much speed as he could muster.

After he’d gone ten steps he realized the runner ahead of him was no longer widening the distance.

In fact, the gap was narrowing.

Then he heard a voice yelling from the bleachers and glanced over to see Josh Malani jumping up and down. “Go, Mike! Go!”

Clenching his fists as if to squeeze even more energy out of his body, Michael focused on closing the gap. After they had run forty meters, there were only four meters between them.

At seventy meters, Michael was only a foot behind.

He came abreast of the other runner at eighty meters, and when he crossed the finish line he was at least a full meter ahead.

Slowing down, he waited for the consequences. The guy already hated him just because of the color of his skin, and now he’d beaten him in front of his friends. Great!

Josh Malani was out of the bleachers, jogging across the track. “Way to go, Mike! You left him in the dust!”

Without warning, the guy he’d just beaten, who’d earlier looked as if he was ready to smash Michael’s face, stopped short, his expression confused. “You’re Mike Sundquist?” he demanded.

“Michael,” Josh said immediately. “He hates it if you call him Mike.”

“So that’s why you call him Mike?” the guy with the
stopwatch demanded. “I thought he pulled you out of the reef!”

“He did.”

“So show a little respect!” He turned to Michael. “Malani gives you any trouble, you let me know. I been wantin’ to kick the shit out of him for years, but he’s too small to bother with. Even smaller than you. But he can’t run!”

Michael’s head was swimming. What was going on?

“How’d you do that?” the defeated runner was asking now. “Jesus, man! I was ten meters ahead of you, and goin’ full speed when you started!” Slinging an arm around Michael’s shoulders, he started back toward the coach and the rest of the team, calling out to the boy with the stopwatch. “Hey, Rick, how fast did he do that hundred?”

“A little more than eleven seconds,” the timer replied.

“That’s a whole second faster than anyone we’ve ever had,” the other one said. “I can do the long stuff, but it’s a bitch getting up to speed.”

Michael eyed him suspiciously. “I thought I was supposed to eat shit!”

The huge boy grinned. “That was when you were nothin’ but a stinkin’
haole.
I’m Jeff Kina.” He stuck out his hand, then turned to call to the coach, “Hey, Mr. Peters, he’s on the team, isn’t he?”

“He is, but I don’t know how much longer you will be. How’d you get beaten by someone half a foot smaller than you, when you had a head start?”

An enormous laugh rumbled from Jeff Kina’s throat. “Hey, I can’t do everything, can I? So what I can’t do, Michael will take care of, and this year we’ll kick everyone’s ass. Right?”

For the first time, Michael began to think that coming
to Maui might not have been such a bad idea after all, and when he called home an hour later—his first track practice behind him—he didn’t even bother to pretend to be cool.

“It’s me, Mom,” he said when the answering machine picked up his call. “Guess what? I did it! I made the track team! Can you believe it? I
made
it!” He paused for a second, then rushed on, his words spewing out in a torrent of excitement. “I’ve met a whole bunch of new guys, and they’re really great. Except that one of them was gonna—” He cut himself short, then quickly changed course. No use getting his mother all upset by telling her someone had threatened to beat him up this morning. Besides, that was all over now. “Anyway, I’m gonna go out with Josh and a bunch of guys from the team. We’re going over to Kihei and grab a burger and go to a movie or something, to celebrate. I’ll be home by ten-thirty, maybe eleven. Isn’t it great that I made it? See you later!” Hanging up the phone, Michael grinned at Josh Malani and Jeff Kina, who were waiting for him by the door. “Where’re the other guys?”

“They took off already,” Josh told him.

“Then let’s go!” Michael said, picking up his book bag. “Anybody know what movies are playing?”

But as they were leaving the locker room and heading toward the parking lot, Josh Malani came up with another suggestion—one that had nothing to do with movies. As he listened, Michael felt a knot forming in his stomach.

Part of it, he knew, was excitement at the idea Josh was proposing.

But another part of it was fear.

“Night diving?” he asked as he tossed his book bag into the back of Josh’s Chevy pickup. “Isn’t it dangerous?”

Josh grinned at him. “A little, maybe. But so what? You’re gonna love it!”

Maybe I should call Mom back,
Michael thought as he and the two other boys piled into Josh’s rusting pickup truck.
Maybe I should tell her what we’re really doing. After all, if something happens …

Forget it,
he told himself.
All she’ll do is worry.

“You sure this is a good idea?” Michael asked again. He, Josh Malani, Jeff Kina, and two other guys from the track team—Rick Pieper and someone named Kioki, whose last name Michael didn’t remember—had grabbed hamburgers, fries, and Cokes at a place called Peggy Sue’s. As they ate, Josh explained how they would equip themselves at Kihei Ken’s Dive Shop: “He leaves the key under the barrel behind the back door.”

“What’s that got to do with it?” Michael asked, though by now he thought he knew Josh well enough to be certain that whatever peculiar illogic his friend might come up with, he would manage to make it sound reasonable.

“Ken’s my friend, and he’d say it was okay.”