As an observer, I realized that this is what Paula had intended all along. Sheer brilliance, and almost as skillful as her curveball. Yeah, she was definitely different from most of the kids in Billington.
I was dreaming about all the conversations Paula and I might have if she didn’t hate my guts, when I heard the voice behind me.
If there’s such a thing as intuition, I wasn’t blessed with it. If there’s such a thing as a premonition, I never had one—although I should have when I heard that voice. I should have seen lighting bolts and my whole life flashing before my eyes.
“How come you’re not out there?” said the deep voice.
I couldn’t place it at first. I didn’t say anything back, because I didn’t know who was talking to me. Actually he was talking to both Wesley and me.
I turned around to see Mr. Grant, our notorious security-janitor. Wesley replied first, with his typical shrug of an answer. “I don’t know, maybe because I got a life?” he said, which was really just wishful thinking.
Grant stared straight at me. “So what’s you’re excuse?”
“I used to play,” I told him. “But I got allergic.”
“I remember,” he said, to my uncomfortable surprise.
“Why should you care?” I asked.
He took off his cap and scratched his thick blond hair. He wasn’t an old man, but worn and weathered, the way cowboys are in movies. He rubbed his beard thoughtfully. “A kid like you should develop his skills,” he said. “Agility, reflexes, pinpoint accuracy. A kid like you is gonna need those skills.”
By now that run-in that I had with him the other day was creeping back into my mind—that weird thing he said about Ethan. I was starting to get squirmy.
“Baseball and I do fine without each other.”
He nodded and didn’t say anything else, but still his voice rang within my head, and I swore I could feel his eyes burning into the back of my neck, right until the last inning.
That’s when I got into the fight with the big kid one row down.
It was stupid, really. Maybe it was because I was hot, or maybe because Grant had gotten under my skin in a way I couldn’t fathom, but then again, maybe it was just because I couldn’t stomach morons. Anyway, these two kids were rooting for the other team—which was fine, but one of them kept whispering rude things about Paula beneath his breath, as if calling her names would somehow change the no-hitter she was throwing.
I imagined this guy was an insect beneath my feet, and so I planted my foot firmly on his hand, which was resting on the bench.
“Hey, what’s your problem?” he said.
“Sorry,” I told him. “I mistook you for a cockroach. Easy mistake.”
By now, Wesley, who had a stronger survival instinct than I did, began leaning away from me, pretending he didn’t know me.
The guy, who was a junior and about three inches taller than me, lifted his tread-marked hand and whapped me in the stomach. So I whapped him in the face, and as the crowd cheered the first hit off of Paula, I dove headlong into a brawl.
It was no contest. I knew it was a lost cause from the beginning, but then lost causes were always my specialty. Turns out the guy was on the kick boxing team, so not only could he punch my lights out, but he could kick them out as well.
I got beat up so bad, the guy was embarrassed.
By now there was a crowd around me peering down in pity. That hurt worse than the beating.
“Are you okay, son?” some old guy said, like he was helping some snot-nosed kid on a playground.
“I’m fine,” I said, not looking anyone in the face, “just fine.” And I limped at full speed toward the restrooms across the park.
Once inside, I felt my guts wanting to view the world through my open mouth, but I wouldn’t let them. I told myself it was just the septic smell of the dank bathroom that made me feel that way, and I swallowed hard, forcing the feeling back down into my gut. Then I splashed cold water on my face and tried to deny that I was crying. I’ve always cried too often for a kid who’s supposed to be a tough pain-in-the-ass. But no one ever sees. I reached for a towel to dry my face, but there were none, just one of those useless air blowers, and when I looked up, I caught my reflection in the mirror.
My lips were puffing up, my right eye was turning colors, and if that wasn’t awful enough, I began to have one of those really miserable moments when you see more than just your reflection in the mirror. Past, present, and future. I saw me in all my glory. I felt all the anger from the fight coming back like a boomerang until it was focused on that reflection, swelling up, growing uglier than Billy Chambers.
It would have been so easy to stare at that reflection and scream at it, “I hate you,” but I’d been through that before, enough to know that hating myself wasn’t the problem or the solution. I didn’t know what was wrong. I didn’t know what I wanted—I just wanted. And all I knew for sure was that Billington was to blame. If I could wipe it, and every town like it, off the face of the planet, I would have done it without a second thought and without a stitch of remorse. But all I had the power to do was to hide in a urine-stenched bathroom, wishing it would all just go away.
The bathroom door opened behind me.
Then it closed.
I figured it was just someone coming in to take a leak until I heard the voice.
“Your head’s a mess and you don’t know why.”
This time I didn’t have to turn around to know that it was Grant.
He continued, so sure of his words. “You have an instinct to fight, but there’s nothing worth the battle. How sad for you.” And then he left, letting the door swing closed behind him.
I went after him. Nobody reaches into my head like that without me retaliating with some serious verbal abuse.
I found him leaning up against the side of the cinder-block restroom, with a large brown paper bag at his feet.
“What the hell’s your problem?” I spat out.
He shook his head. “Not my problem—yours.”
“What do you know about it?”
“Enough,” he said. Then he looked at me and grinned, like he was seeing right through me. “Your life is so pleasant. Everything about it is so nice.”
He was right. “Nice” is exactly what it was. Not terrible, not wonderful; neither cold nor hot. Room temperature. Nice. A fouler word had never been invented.
“It’s all so steady and so smooth,” Grant continued. “You’re afraid you’ll live nice, then die nice, and your life will have been a nice waste of time. Am I right?”
I nodded.
“Well,” he said, “it’s not gonna happen that way.”
I breathed a heavy sigh of relief—as if hearing him say it made it true—and I began to realize just how much power this man suddenly had over me. I wanted to know how he could have done that—but more important, I wanted to know why.
“You need excitement and worlds to conquer,” he said with a knowing gleam in his eye. “Something you can feel.”
There were alarms going off inside my head now. Suddenly this little cinder-block bathroom seemed miles from safety. I felt like a small child who didn’t listen and took candy from a the wrong stranger. What did he want?
Yet I could sense that this wasn’t about something he wanted—it was about something he knew. Something about me, that nobody else was willing to tell. It thrilled me to think that there could be something about myself that I didn’t already know, and the desire to know what it was muffled my alarms.
He picked up his crumpled grocery bag. Something heavy was inside. “Your parents have all chosen to forget,” he said. “You have to make them remember.”
By now the pain in my face and my bruised body seemed trivial. “What’s in the bag?” I dared to ask him.
“It’s for you,” he said, handing it to me. “I believe it will fit.”
I looked inside to see something metallic gray. It was a glove. A glove made of steel that went clear up to
the elbow. It didn’t look complicated—but it didn’t look like something anyone around here had made.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” I asked.
Grant didn’t answer me. Instead he said, “There’s an old barn at the north end of Old Town Billington. Near where the bridge used to be. Be there Tuesday, after school. I’ll show you how to use it.”
“Old Town?” It was a long time since I heard the place even mentioned. It was a miserable corner of Billington, low on my list of places I’d ever care to visit again.
“Can I count on you?” he asked.
I wanted to ask him more questions, and yet all I could do was nod.
“Don’t tell anyone,” he said. “Don’t show it to anyone.” Then he strode off without looking back.
I ducked back into the bathroom, as if I had to hide the thing from the light of day, then I reached into the bag and pulled it out. It was clumsy and heavy—an unsightly thing with bulky ridges in unexpected places. Standing in front of the mirror, I slipped it on. It felt like it was made for a hand my size, but not necessarily a hand my shape. It seemed too flat and wide, still, when I moved my fingers, the fingers of the glove moved surprisingly easily.
Lifting my hand, I flexed my fingers, spreading them out as wide as they would go. And the mirror exploded.
–3–
OLD TOWN
Thanks for ruining my no-hitter yesterday,” said Paula, standing in my doorway. “I’d punch you,” she said, “but I don’t think I could find a place left to bruise.”
After my strange meeting with Grant the day before, I felt like someone had taken an eggbeater to my brain. Paula’s appearance at my front door didn’t help. Although my face wasn’t as swollen as it had been, I still looked like a bad mug shot, so I tried to stand back in the afternoon shadows.
“What do you mean I ruined it?” I protested.
“You broke my concentration,” she said.
“Try again—I didn’t start fighting until after the ball got hit.”
“No,” said Paula, with the calm control of a prosecutor, “that creep was saying things about me, and you stepped on his hand. That’s when I started throwing bad pitches.”
“What are you, an alien? Do you have eyes in the back of your head? I countered.
“No,” she said, “but a pitcher has to be observant.”
Then it occurred to me that of all the people in the stands, she chose to be observant of me. The slightest grin came to my face—I couldn’t hold it back. It made her uncomfortable—I could tell, because I’m pretty observant myself.
“Well,” she said, “I just thought I’d tell you.” Then she took a step back and turned to leave.
In that instant as she was turning away, I didn’t have the chance to think about what I was going to say to keep her there. So I just shut down my brain and opened my mouth—which was a well-practiced talent of mine.
“There’s something I want to show you,” I said.
Paula turned back. “What?”
“Come on in.” I opened the door, and she stepped in.
I led her through the house and out the back door, thankful that my parents were still at church and I was spared the burden of an explanation. Once out back, I reached under the back porch and pulled out the grocery bag Grant had given me.
“What are you doing?” asked Paula.
“You’ll see.”
Our backyard is almost an acre. You get yards that size when your town’s in the boondocks. At the end of our property, there’s a useless little barbed-wire fence, blocking off our land from the fallow pasture beyond, where no cows had grazed since before I was born.
I led Paula beneath the wire and over a hill, so neither my house nor any of the other homes on the road had a clear view of us.
Then I pulled the glove out of the bag and showed it to her.
“It’s weird—what is it?” she asked.
“I’ll show you.”
About fifty yards away were a bunch of tin cans set up on old apple crates. I’d set them up myself the day before. I slipped the glove on my hand, which was already becoming callused from wearing the clumsy thing. Then I pointed my index finger toward one of the cans . . . and tensed the muscle.
Fffft! Ping!
The can flew off the apple box. I was surprised that I got it on the first shot. It usually took nine or ten.
Paula looked at my uncertainly. “How’d you do that?”
I grinned. “It’s magic,” I said.
But she wasn’t buying. “Nice try,” she said, then grabbed my arm, turning it every whichway, practically breaking it off. She examined the fine, intricate device, from the pneumatic firing mechanism to the tiny barrels that spread across the back of my hand and to my fingertips like an exoskeleton. Then she found a catch near the elbow.
“No, don’t!” I said—too late. She flipped it open, and the load of tiny ball bearings cascaded out, disappearing into the thick weeds of the meadow.
“Ha!” she announced. “I knew there was a rational explanation.”
I knelt down, trying to salvage what BB’s I could from the meadow. “You didn’t have to do that,” I whined—but shut up when I realized I was whining.
“So, it’s a BB gun,” she said.
“Well, yeah,” I stammered, frustrated that she could reduce it to something so commonplace. “But it’s a really cool BB gun. See, there are five channels—one running down the length of each finger. When you straighten your finger and tense it, it fires. You can fire in five different directions at the same time,” I told her. “I could spread out my fingers and knock down five of those cans if I wanted to.” Then, for emphasis, I raised my hand, tensed my fingers, and sent five BB’s flying simultaneously toward the row of cans. I missed them all.
Paula raised an eyebrow. “Who’d want to shoot in five different directions, anyway?”
“That’s not the point,” I explained, wishing she were a little more impressed. I slipped the glove off my hand and gave it to her, letting her feel its full weight. “You wanna try it?” I asked.
She didn’t answer—she just looked at it, turning it over, taking in all its different angles and ridges.
“Jason,” she finally said, “this is not normal.”
My grin stretched wide. “I know—isn’t that great?”
I thought she might put it on, but she didn’t. I was relieved. Just because I showed it to her didn’t mean I was ready to share it.
“Where’d you get it?” she asked.
I hesitated. “I can’t tell you that,” I finally said.
Her face hardened. She was always honest; I suspect she wanted nothing less in return. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
I realized I had already gone too far. I was supposed to keep it to myself. Tell no one. So I shrugged and gave no further answer.
I saw a gleam in her eye then, and the trace of a grin. I should have guessed what she was about to do, but like I said, intuition wasn’t my strong point.
She turned and bolted, like she was sprinting for first base.
“Hey! Give that back!” I shouted.
She kept on running. “Not until you tell me where you got it.”
I chased, barely able to keep up with her. I could hear her laughing as she ran. At first I was laughing as well, but it got old real quick, when she didn’t let me catch her.
We got farther and farther away from my house, running from field to field, climbing through wire fences, jumping over low, moss-covered stone walls. The trees got denser.
I knew the area behind my house pretty well, but there were some places that I just didn’t go, and after playing this little game for ten minutes, I was so exhausted, I didn’t know where I was headed.
Then we broke through a dense grove of oaks, and I saw the ruined remains of a storm-shattered house. I knew exactly where we were.
I stopped, refusing to chase Paula any farther. I put my hands on my knees, fighting to catch m
y breath.
Up ahead, Paula had stopped beside the abandoned house and was holding my glove over a stone opening in the ground—the entrance to an old storm cellar. Its steps led down into the mossy darkness.
“So,” she said, clearly threatening to drop it in, “tell me where you got it.”
“We shouldn’t be here,” I told her. “Let’s go.”
“Not until you tell me,” she said defiantly.
It made me angry to see her taunting me like that. Not wild-angry like I usually get, but angry in a way that focused my thoughts and made me know exactly what I wanted to say.
“I don’t like you messing with my head,” I told her, “and I don’t like being treated like crap. If I can’t tell you, then I’ve got good reason—and if you can’t accept that, then drop it in and leave.”
She held the glove there for a second longer, then took it away from the hole.
“I thought you could take a joke,” she said.
“I can take one,” I told her, “but I won’t be one.”
She came over to me and gently put the glove back in my arms. “You’re not,” she said.
The moment could have turned uncomfortable then, if we both didn’t have the good sense to look away from each other. She turned her attention to the ruined house behind us.
“I wonder who lived here.”
“C’mon, let’s get back,” I said.
She looked at me, observing far more than I really wanted her to.
“You’re spooked, aren’t you?”
I would have denied it, but lying to Paula was still beyond my skill level. “This part of town gives me the creeps,” I told her.
Telling her that was as good as an invitation.
She walked around to the front of the ruined house, for a moment putting aside thoughts of my BB glove, and I had no choice but to follow.
I found her standing in what was left of the front yard, staring at the street, her eyes rabbit-wide. “This is unreal!” she said.
Well, at least I had finally succeeded in impressing her.
The street before us—if you can call it a street—was weed-choked and broken into a mosaic of uneven asphalt. Trees lined the broken pavement. All dead. Skeletal hedges still clung to some of the pickets surrounding the homes. Some looked green, but the only thing living in them were the weeds that had tangled themselves up with the bushes.