((This story takes place the day after the prom.))
Things I’ve figured out in the month since I started at Westbrook:
1. Don’t get into fights at the mall.
2. Respect the magic, no matter how crazy you think it is.
3. Roach is full of it.
4. All the girls the girls at school – ALL the girls – are prettier than the ones back home.
5. Don’t play hide-and-seek with Mr. Deathrage’s mop bucket.
One of the things I ain’t figured out is why the company that makes microwave ovens and toasters is out to get me. Serious. Crey Industries has a small army of field agents around parts of the city and when they see me, they come after me. You don’t have to take my word for it. Mia saw it with her own eyes. We were just doing some patrolling in Bricks and they jumped us!
It’s been going on for a couple weeks. The first run-ins I had, I was in street clothes. I came back when I got my new patrol costume (a super-cool uniform designed by Mia with a long scarf that wraps around my face to hide my identity) with hopes that I might be able to find out what they were up to. At first they ignored me and I left them alone, but it wasn’t long before I saw a group of their men-in-black surrounding a woman in an alley. There was a guy in something like surgical scrubs with them. He was saying, “We have ways of taking what we want.” When I heard that I charged in and broke things up. In a second, the Crey guys scattered and disappeared.
When I looked around for the woman, she had already run out of the alley and was across the street running up the sidewalk calling for help. Whatever they were doing to her, it must have been pretty scary to make her run like that, but at least she was all right.
I flagged down a policeman and told him what happened, but he just looked down his nose at me and said, “Mind your own business, scarf boy.” So now I knew that the cops in Bricks were on the payroll of Crey Industries’ Nefarious Division.
So here I am on a nice warm day like today, and instead of hanging out with my friends or hitting the beach in Talos, I’m crouching on a rooftop, scouting for more men-in-black and hoping to get some answers.
It ain’t long before I get my opportunity.
First I hear a scream, and then I see a girl run into the alley below me. Short skirt, red hair, tall, and slim. I don’t know her but I recognize her. I’ve seen her at the mall. She’s running like she’s scared for her life. I get ready to move, half expecting to see a bunch of Freakshow chasing her. I’m surprised when I see men-in-black following close on her heels. I time my jump so that I land between her and them.
Just like that, the bad guys scatter and run. I know I said I wanted answers, and I should go after them, but right now, making sure this girl is all right seems more important. I let the MIBs get away while I turn to see –
She’s laughing. Her green eyes light up like Christmas lights and she punches me. I fly back, smashing into a dumpster, making a me-shaped dent in the front of it. I wasn’t ready for that. I wasn’t focused. It hurt.
It ain’t easy keeping myself invulnerable all the time. Sometimes I drop my guard. It’s what I get for not taking the time to fully assess the situation. Mr. Druce is gonna chew me out good when he hears about this.
“Dang, girl,” I say as I pull myself out of the dent and stand up. “If you wanted my number all you had to do was ask.”
“Looks like I’ve already got your number,” she tells me.
“Yeah, well…” (Dang it hurts to talk.) “Hope you don’t think I’m always this easy.”
She laughs again. I know she can see the pain in my eyes. “Your lines are as terrible as your fighting.”
I’m up, and I’m focused. She won’t get me again.
I brace for her to lunge into me for another round but she stands her ground and waits for me to make the next move. I hope she can take a punch as good as she can give one because I’m about to –
Something’s wrong. I swing. I connect. It’s like hitting an impervium wall. The white-hot pain in my hand shoots up my arm and into my shoulder.
“I haven’t told you my name, have I?”
She grabs my neck and lifts me off of my feet like I’m nothing. I can’t breathe. I’m sure that she’s going to crush my throat and kill me.
“My name’s Heidi, but I’m registered as Hijack.”
What…? She’s a registered hero? That doesn’t make – but nothing makes… Every… thing… is going…
“Sucks to be beat down with your own powers, huh?”
…black.
Mia’s fingers are in my hair and her bare leg is drawing slowly across my own. I try to move, but I just can’t. I don’t care. I’m afraid to open my eyes because I know it’s just a dream. Then I hear her soft voice say, “You’re so cluelessly adorable,” and when she says it, I can feel her lips brush my ear.
“Heidi!”
My eyes pop open and I realize I’m not dreaming – not quite – and this definitely ain’t Mia. Stupidly, the first thing in my mind is how guilty I feel for dreaming of Mia instead of Krista with whom I have a date this week.
“Daddy!” Heidi jumps off of the slab that I’m strapped to and straightens her skirt.
Blushing, she sheepishly walks across the room and stands behind a tall slender man with white hair whose posture is that of a man who is used to issuing orders. His face is lined, and the lines converge around cold blue eyes that look at me like I’m some sort of bug. He’s wearing an expensive suit, dark gray with blue-gray pinstripes. His tie is diagonal stripes – navy blue, blue-blue, and silver-blue – and for a tie pin he’s got a big round diamond that has to be real because this kind of man wouldn’t wear a fake.
I’m held down by thick, heavy straps to a cold steel table. All I’m wearing is my tighty-whities and my socks.
Daddy smiles like a crocodile and says, “Ah, Scarf Boy, you’re awake.”
Scarf Boy? Seriously? “Yeah I’m awake, and I’m gonna rip out of these restraints, and come over there to rip you a new one.”
He laughs. Heidi laughs. The mibs who are standing behind them laugh.
“Sorry, Scarf Boy,” he says, “You’re in no position to threaten anyone. I’m afraid that you won’t get your powers back until you are out of proximity of my daughter.”
I strain, but I can’t budge the straps that are holding me. I hear a servo-motor spin as a machine that looks like some sort of laser or particle-beam weapon swings into place directly above my head.
“What? Do you expect me to die?”
“No, Scarf Boy. I expect you to talk.”
Okay… I seriously do not understand what is going on here.
“Okay, I’ll talk – when I get outta here I’m gonna hurt you seriously bad. How’s that? Good enough?”
He walks closer to me. Following on his heels, Heidi peeks out from behind him and grins at me like I should be in on the joke.
Totally unruffled, Daddy smiles and says, “Tsk, tsk. It shows bad upbringing when a young man such as yourself disrespects his betters.”
“Like Heidi was showin’ her good upbringin’ by makin’ out with me while I was knocked out? They got a name for that where I come from.”
He raises his fist like he’s going to hit me and the mibs step back out of the way, but then the fist opens and his fingers reach for a knob on the laser/particle-beam device. He turns the knob and the machine hums as it powers up. Then a bright white light shoots into my eyes and I’m sure I can feel the beam slicing straight into my brain. Then seconds later it goes dark and I’m trying to blink my vision back.
“Well?” Daddy says. I’m not sure who to because I still can’t see.
“It’s a match,” comes back the response. “Same kid.”
By the time my eyes work again, Heidi is standing to my left and her father is standing at my head, glaring down at me.
“We’ve been keeping track of you, boy,” he says.
“Yeah? Well, I’ve been keepin’ track of you guys too,” I say. “I know you’re up to somethin’ in Brickstown, and I’m gonna find out what it is – and why you’re always attackin’ me.” All of which was big talk considering I was in as precarious a predicament as a tap-dancer in a rattlesnake den.
“Us? Attack you?” He looks down on me with this fake innocent-and-offended expression, and says, “I think you have things backwards.”
“Chyeah, right.”
The scanning device (as it turned out to be) swings away and a panel opens in the ceiling above me. From it, a video monitor lowers to within a few feet of my face.
“Tell me, Scarf Boy, if you remember this altercation with my employees.”
I see a group of MIBs along with a couple of Power Suits standing in a circle around a frightened old man. Then I see myself fall into the shot from up above. I can only see my back, but I know it’s me. I’m in street clothes, so this is pre-new costume. I bowl through through the Crey creeps and in less than two minutes, I’ve bagged and tagged the whole bunch and sent them to the Zig. The old man has disappeared, probably having run away during the melee.
“I remember. I kicked their butts.”
Heidi’s father smiles at me, a victor’s smile. I get a sinking feeling in my gut…
“Let’s see the rest of the video, shall we?”
The video plays in reverse to just before I arrived, then back a little more. The MIBs and Power Suits walk backward or drop upward out of the shot and a small mob Freakshow run backward into the shot. The old man is just standing there, scared out of his wits, forward or backward. The Crey agents weren’t what frightened him – it was the Freakshow. The Crey agents were there to rescue him.
Oh snap.
Then he plays me the encounter that started it all, the woman in the alley. It seems that “We have ways of taking what we want,” was preceded by the woman asking, “Can you take a DNA sample here on the spot?” and before that by, “Hello, we are part of a research team who are working on ways to make sure that humanity survives in the face of dangerous threats not of this world. If you would like to help with survival of the human race, you can do so simply by providing us with a sample of your DNA. It is a non-obtrusive, pain-free procedure.”
She wasn’t scared off by the Crey personnel… she was scared off by me.
“There are more,” Daddy says, “Would you like to see them?”
“I seen enough,” I say.
“Good. Then I think we may be able to reach an understanding. I will let you go and you will stop interfering with my research.”
“What about false imprisonment – ain’t that illegal? You ain’t afraid I’ll call the law on you?”
“Silly Scarf Boy, it would be your word against mine. And you must admit – with your background…”
What? How --?
“I see the question in your eyes. Don’t you know that the FBI keeps a database of meta-human offenders? We matched you from that first video.” He pauses and points toward the machine that had shot the light into my eyes. “And we further confirmed your identity through a retinal/cerebral scan. So, you see, I have nothing to fear from you, Scarf Boy – or would you rather I call you Wyatt.”
I’d rather he didn’t call me at all.
“I’ll take your silent acquiescence as implicit agreement in this matter.”
I feel like I’ve just been spanked and stood in the corner and there’s not a danged thing I can do about it.
The bands are released and one if the MIBs drops my bundled uniform on my lap. I give a perturbed glare toward Heidi and she moves to behind her old man and hides her face while I get dressed. Daddy keeps his condescending eyes on me.
When I’m dressed he says, “You may go now. Heidi will walk you out. And remember, there are cameras everywhere.”
We walk out of the room and turn down corridor after corridor of closed doors without any visible means of opening them. After a short while Heidi says without breaking stride or looking at me, “It’s energy.”
I follow her lead and don’t look her way when I say, “What?”
“Your powers. They’re energy based. Otherwise I couldn’t hijack them.”
“Oh. Okay. Good to know.”
“You’re welcome.”
Nothing else is said until we come to a door with an EXIT sign above it. She pushes it open and says cryptically, “Look for me at the mall. I have more.”
The door closes with a decisive click. I walk about a half-block before I feel my powers return, then I take a flying leap toward Westbrook.
Crushed, Crushing, and Crushes
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Wyatt Wyborn
- Member
- Posts:196
- Joined:Fri Apr 08, 2011 5:49 pm
Re: Crushed, Crushing, and Crushes
After a thousand feet of digging a three-foot by five-foot trench, even I get tired. Okay, not tired, tired, but… tired. But if it’s going to get me my weekend back, then it’s worth it. Totes.
Mr. Deathrage marked out the path for the trench with chalk before I started. It’s for a new sewer line to replace an old section of terra cotta pipe that time and trees have broken down. He keeps coming to inspect my work. He’ll nod and mumble and walk away. Guess I’m doing all right.
It’s been a sucky week. The night of prom was like the best night of my life. Mia seemed happy with James and I was like cool with that. Like I could stop crushing on her and get on with things.
And Krista – Krista was… wow! She looked… dang! I can’t even tell you how good she looked, not with words. And then when we all went to the mall after and she beat me at air hockey and looked so good doing it – I felt like the luckiest boy in town. I asked her out for that next Wednesday, and she said yes!
But then Monday happened.
Brook is always playing momma hen on me. Telling me that I need to grow up. That I need to stop shooting myself in the foot. That I have a lot going for me and I should make the most of it instead of doing what I do. But Monday, during Mr. Druce’s class, I did what I do.
First off, I told him that I could learn more from a comic book than I can from his class. (Why did I do that? Why!?) And then during the simulation runs, wound up on a team with Mia and showed off, trying to run ahead and accomplish our objective without the team. (Why!?) So, Mia wound up getting hurt on my account. (Why!?) And then, because I just couldn’t stand myself and figured nobody else could either, I walked out of class. (Why!?)
But I need to back up a little bit to earlier Monday…
In any high school, after any prom, there are going to be rumors flying. I heard all sorts of things. I heard that (name withheld to protect the guilty) and (ditto) broke into the teachers lounge and put laxative in the sugar for the coffee-maker. I heard about Erma making out with Mike and Steve at the same time. The first one I believed, and the second I knew better because I saw what happened – Erma got snagged on a nail head and Mike and Toley helped her get unsnagged without destroying her dress.
But the rumor that ate at me the most was this: Mia and James had spent the night together and then broke up. At first I didn’t believe any of it. No way they -- But then I found out that they did break up, so that other…
I mean… dang… I saw them together the night before and she seemed like everything was perfect and I was so happy for her and all was right with the world and I had found a girl who seemed to actually like me in spite of myself…
But Monday, Mia was so sad, crying all day long. I couldn’t stand it. I wanted to hold her. To tell her it would be all right. To kiss her tears away.
I wanted to make her forget about James.
All of which was the wrong thing to do and Brook and Roach both let me know that it was the wrong thing to do and that the right thing would be to stay away from Mia and let her and James work things out and…
And during class, like I said, I showed off. Tanked our assignment (and not in the way I was supposed to), and earned a week’s detention.
Yeah, no leaving campus until next Monday. No weekend. Worst of all, I had to cancel my date with Krista.
You know, most guys would be thrilled just to have a girl like Krista look their way twice, and I got to dance with her, and party with her at the mall and almost – almost – kiss her when I walked her to her room. I mean, she’s perfect for me. A nice girl, drop-dead beautiful, funny, great dancer, laughs at my jokes…
And she’s been too busy for us to get together and give me a chance to ask for another chance, another date…
And it’s my own fault. Can’t stop crushing on Mia. Can’t keep my word to Krista. Brook and Roach (and probably everybody else) think I’m an immature idiot.
Quick – take a look and see if there’s an “L” on my forehead.
That’s the thing about menial labor – you don’t have to think about your work while you work. You think about other things. Things you’ve screwed up. Things you can fix. Things you can’t. Things you want and how to get them. The problem is how to know what you really want. And I don’t.
I do know that after I dig this trench and helping lay down the pvc pipe, I’m free. Hard labor versus time served. It was my idea, and I had to talk a deal and make some promises as to my future behavior to get it. But now I’ll have a weekend. And for now, that’s enough.
Mr. Deathrage marked out the path for the trench with chalk before I started. It’s for a new sewer line to replace an old section of terra cotta pipe that time and trees have broken down. He keeps coming to inspect my work. He’ll nod and mumble and walk away. Guess I’m doing all right.
It’s been a sucky week. The night of prom was like the best night of my life. Mia seemed happy with James and I was like cool with that. Like I could stop crushing on her and get on with things.
And Krista – Krista was… wow! She looked… dang! I can’t even tell you how good she looked, not with words. And then when we all went to the mall after and she beat me at air hockey and looked so good doing it – I felt like the luckiest boy in town. I asked her out for that next Wednesday, and she said yes!
But then Monday happened.
Brook is always playing momma hen on me. Telling me that I need to grow up. That I need to stop shooting myself in the foot. That I have a lot going for me and I should make the most of it instead of doing what I do. But Monday, during Mr. Druce’s class, I did what I do.
First off, I told him that I could learn more from a comic book than I can from his class. (Why did I do that? Why!?) And then during the simulation runs, wound up on a team with Mia and showed off, trying to run ahead and accomplish our objective without the team. (Why!?) So, Mia wound up getting hurt on my account. (Why!?) And then, because I just couldn’t stand myself and figured nobody else could either, I walked out of class. (Why!?)
But I need to back up a little bit to earlier Monday…
In any high school, after any prom, there are going to be rumors flying. I heard all sorts of things. I heard that (name withheld to protect the guilty) and (ditto) broke into the teachers lounge and put laxative in the sugar for the coffee-maker. I heard about Erma making out with Mike and Steve at the same time. The first one I believed, and the second I knew better because I saw what happened – Erma got snagged on a nail head and Mike and Toley helped her get unsnagged without destroying her dress.
But the rumor that ate at me the most was this: Mia and James had spent the night together and then broke up. At first I didn’t believe any of it. No way they -- But then I found out that they did break up, so that other…
I mean… dang… I saw them together the night before and she seemed like everything was perfect and I was so happy for her and all was right with the world and I had found a girl who seemed to actually like me in spite of myself…
But Monday, Mia was so sad, crying all day long. I couldn’t stand it. I wanted to hold her. To tell her it would be all right. To kiss her tears away.
I wanted to make her forget about James.
All of which was the wrong thing to do and Brook and Roach both let me know that it was the wrong thing to do and that the right thing would be to stay away from Mia and let her and James work things out and…
And during class, like I said, I showed off. Tanked our assignment (and not in the way I was supposed to), and earned a week’s detention.
Yeah, no leaving campus until next Monday. No weekend. Worst of all, I had to cancel my date with Krista.
You know, most guys would be thrilled just to have a girl like Krista look their way twice, and I got to dance with her, and party with her at the mall and almost – almost – kiss her when I walked her to her room. I mean, she’s perfect for me. A nice girl, drop-dead beautiful, funny, great dancer, laughs at my jokes…
And she’s been too busy for us to get together and give me a chance to ask for another chance, another date…
And it’s my own fault. Can’t stop crushing on Mia. Can’t keep my word to Krista. Brook and Roach (and probably everybody else) think I’m an immature idiot.
Quick – take a look and see if there’s an “L” on my forehead.
That’s the thing about menial labor – you don’t have to think about your work while you work. You think about other things. Things you’ve screwed up. Things you can fix. Things you can’t. Things you want and how to get them. The problem is how to know what you really want. And I don’t.
I do know that after I dig this trench and helping lay down the pvc pipe, I’m free. Hard labor versus time served. It was my idea, and I had to talk a deal and make some promises as to my future behavior to get it. But now I’ll have a weekend. And for now, that’s enough.
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Wyatt Wyborn
- Member
- Posts:196
- Joined:Fri Apr 08, 2011 5:49 pm
Re: Crushed, Crushing, and Crushes
(Except for the framing device and a little reorganization, this is pretty much the chatlog from last night at the pool. *Warning -- teen angst and maybe some offensive language.*)
“It’s all right. Take your time.”
Ms. Wilson looks at me over her glasses and waits for me to start talking. I don’t know why I came to see her. I’ve never voluntarily gone to the guidance counselor before, either here or back home. And now that I’m here I don’t know what to say. I mean, I know it’s all supposed to stay confidential, but once the words, “I want to kill my best friend,” come out of my mouth, I’m pretty sure the whole school administration and Judge Hernadez and the states of Rhode Island and North Carolina will all become involved. Because I’m serious. I want to kill Roach.
Roach is a psychic. He can pick up thoughts from people, some more so than others. For some reason, my stupid brain practically beams HD to his brain. Heck, half the time he knows what I’m thinking before I do. It’s led to some problems between us, but it’s also made a closeness that’s hard to describe.
But not any more. Roach broke that bond. Broke it, stomped it, spit on it, and took a whiz all over it.
Ms. Wilson is still looking at me over her glasses.
“I’ve heard the rumors, Wyatt. I’d rather hear the truth from you.”
Truth. Gyah! I hate that word. It’s what started all the trouble.
Things were going good. Everybody was having a good time. A bunch of us were in the pool, or around it, talking about stuff: Elissa about her power gloves and how she needed to test their limits; Peyton about cheerleading practice and how things looked like they were coming together well and how Friday we were going to work on Liberty Tick-Tocks or something like that; me picking on Brook for sitting up in the lifeguard chair and calling her Pamela Anderson (you know – like in Baywatch?).
Somebody make a joke and Mia didn’t get it and somehow I said something (I don’t even remember what) that caused Aiden and Ar and Elliot to start picking on me for gay-bashing (which I wasn’t!). They were only joking, but still, I didn’t quite know what to say and whether it would be okay for me to joke back and I got uncomfortable with it and so I just sat down on the bottom of the pool.
I’ve done it before, sit underwater to see how long I can stand it. I’ve done it in the pool and I’ve done it at the beach in Talos. I’m pretty sure that I could stay down for however long I wanted so long as I didn’t fall asleep. It takes a lot of concentration to do it, to maintain that level of invulnerability so that holding my breath that long doesn’t hurt me. I’ve told people I can breathe underwater, but that’s not the truth. I mean, maybe I can, but I can’t work up the courage to take that first big breath, that big gulp of water into my lungs. But I’ve stayed down for over a half-hour. After that I get claustrophobic and, like I said, if I don’t concentrate…
So sure, at first when I went under I looked at Mia and Jessie underwater. Gyah, saying that makes me feel kinda creepy, but any guy would do the same. It’s like in that part of the male brain that they call the lizard brain, the part that’s the most like an animal brain, where all your baser instincts and inclinations come from. You’re supposed to fight it, because humans are a higher level of intelligence, but if you see a nice pair of legs or good-looking girl in a bikini, you’re gonna look. So I looked. But it’s not like I was looking the whole time I was down there. I would’ve lost concentration.
I gave everyone time to move on to another subject of conversation and then popped up out of the water. By then, Lorne, Cassie, Roach, Etienne, Bronka – some of the ones who were playing D&D in the library – had come in. They all seemed to be in a good mood too. Everybody seemed to be having a good time.
A little while later, Krista came in.
I’d been almost afraid to talk to her after I had to cancel our date last week. It wasn’t fair for me to get in trouble and have to call it off. I figured that would finish my chances with her. But when I saw her I thought that maybe… maybe…
She sat on a bench near the pool and I got out and sat beside her.
Krista is pretty. Really pretty. She’s the kind of girl that you could grow up next door to and go to school with, but won’t notice until one day – BAM! – you see her, really see her. And after that, you look for her, and then you want to know her, and if you’re really lucky, you do. And I’m the lucky guy who’s gotten to know her.
The conversation around us had turned to the subject of parents, but I was talking to Krista now, almost whispering, “Forgive me for cancelling our date?”
She gave me this “Duh!” look and said, “Totally! No worries there.”
For a moment, it felt like things would go right again. Like maybe I’m not the Loser with a capital “L” I thought I was. Like maybe I would stop chasing someone I could never have and be happy with someone just as wonderful. Like maybe I fell in love right there, on the spot. She said yes to going out with me again. For a little bit it was like we were the only people in the room.
“I missed you while I was grounded,” I said. I didn’t include that I was afraid of talking to her, afraid that she would dump me before we ever got started.
"You’re trying to be cute," she said with a smirk that was cute itself.
“I can’t help it.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah, it’s like, in my genes.”
“DNA test-proven?”
“Absolutely.”
And things would have been great if I hadn’t glanced over at Mia. (Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!)
I glanced toward where she was still in a conversation with Ar and Roach, and somehow, the conversation had turned to whether or not it was ever the right thing to do to lie to people. While there might be some situations where lying is the better of two evils (like to spare somebody’s feelings), I was always taught it was better to tell the truth.
I heard Roach say, “Poker is a hellova game to learn. Teaches you how to lie which is important.”
Brook said, “Yeah, if you want to sell used cars later in life.”
Roach told her, “Don’t go ‘Leave it to Beaver’ on me. Lyin' is key in life. Small ones, big ones, some as big as your head.”
Mia said, “Lying is not as important as some people make it out to be.”
Ar said, “Still, a handy skill.”
I had to open my mouth. “Lyin' just gets you in trouble. You forget what lies you've told. Then you tell more lies to cover up lies.”
Roach said, “I'm not an idiot, Cas. It's easy to remember a good story if it's good and it’s believable.”
He calls me “Cas,” short for Casanova, the nickname he gave me.
And it went like that for a while, and we argued back and forth, Roach and Ar in favor of lying for any number of reasons, and me and Mia in favor of telling the truth. Brook saw points on both sides. Krista, sitting beside me still, stayed out of it.
Then Ar said to Mia, “So you're happier knowing that you're hot as hell, but the Disney princess act sometimes wears thin?”
Mia stood there and looked shocked for a moment then hugged her arms across her stomach. "Well, I'm sorry I can't be happy being a jerk to people like you, Ar. My one father raised me better than both of yours!"
And then she ran out. I stood up to follow.
I felt like a heel. Mia’s a big girl. She can handle Ar and Roach. But I stood up to follow her. I was gonna leave Krista to go after another girl.
“Ars, dude... not cool,” I said.
“Ar. It's Ar. For the love of all things imaginary.” He acted like he hadn’t done anything wrong.
“Still not cool,” I said.
“But honest,” he said like nothing had happened, “Better than a lie, right?”
I was getting riled. “That wasn’t the truth and it wasn’t a lie. It was just an insult.”
Ar said, “Going after her?’
“Cue Wyatt,” Roach said, letting me know that he knew I had almost chased after her.
Jessie said, “Be right back,” and went to see about Mia.
I looked at Roach and said, “Shut up.”
“Not the line you were thinkin’,” Roach said back.
“You’re the one standing, man,” Ar said.
“Sometimes you guys go too far,” I told them.
“I wouldn’t call that too far,” Ar said.
“Who decides too far?” Roach asked, and then added, “People have said worse to me and you don't seem to mind, bro. Why does it count as 'too far' for Mia?”
That wasn’t true. Roach doesn’t know the number of times I’ve defended him to other people.
I turned away and asked Krista, “Wanna go for a walk in the garden?”
That’s when things went from real bad to godawful.
Roach looked at Krista and said, “Canary—“ his nickname for her – “Your chest are lookin’ dynomite.”
“Honesty at work,” Ar said.
“Okay…” I said…
Roach: “Is. Are?”
Ar: “Is.”
Me: “Okay… you can stop now.”
Roach, still talking to Krista: “Well, you got two of them…”
Me: “You can stop now.”
Roach: “Oh... so, is honesty not always the best option then?”
I think Krista was about to laugh it off, but I was already too angry to laugh.
I got right in Roach’s face and asked him, “Do you want honesty?”
“Do you want your honesty out in the open?”
From behind us, Ar said, “Boys, just whip them out so we can all move on.”
Roach said, “I'll do 'Show and Tell' if you want, Cas.”
All of a sudden, I felt like Johnny Ringo in that climactic scene from “Tombstone”. You know, where he’s expecting Wyatt Earp to show up and instead it’s Doc Holliday, and Doc says, “I’ll be your huckleberry.” Roach was Doc Holliday. I was outgunned.
“You’re a jerk and people hate you.” That was my shot and it missed.
Roach grinned and nodded. “"Cool beans. You wanna do Mia."
Except he didn’t say “do”.
I don’t know what happened after that. Brook got between us. Roach backed away. Krista said something behind me, but I didn’t have the guts to look at her now.
I left. I found a place to hide. Brook came after me. I cried like a baby for about an hour, but Brook and me are the only ones who know that.
Ms. Wilson looks at me over her glasses and waits for me to start talking.
“It’s all right. Take your time.”
Ms. Wilson looks at me over her glasses and waits for me to start talking. I don’t know why I came to see her. I’ve never voluntarily gone to the guidance counselor before, either here or back home. And now that I’m here I don’t know what to say. I mean, I know it’s all supposed to stay confidential, but once the words, “I want to kill my best friend,” come out of my mouth, I’m pretty sure the whole school administration and Judge Hernadez and the states of Rhode Island and North Carolina will all become involved. Because I’m serious. I want to kill Roach.
Roach is a psychic. He can pick up thoughts from people, some more so than others. For some reason, my stupid brain practically beams HD to his brain. Heck, half the time he knows what I’m thinking before I do. It’s led to some problems between us, but it’s also made a closeness that’s hard to describe.
But not any more. Roach broke that bond. Broke it, stomped it, spit on it, and took a whiz all over it.
Ms. Wilson is still looking at me over her glasses.
“I’ve heard the rumors, Wyatt. I’d rather hear the truth from you.”
Truth. Gyah! I hate that word. It’s what started all the trouble.
Things were going good. Everybody was having a good time. A bunch of us were in the pool, or around it, talking about stuff: Elissa about her power gloves and how she needed to test their limits; Peyton about cheerleading practice and how things looked like they were coming together well and how Friday we were going to work on Liberty Tick-Tocks or something like that; me picking on Brook for sitting up in the lifeguard chair and calling her Pamela Anderson (you know – like in Baywatch?).
Somebody make a joke and Mia didn’t get it and somehow I said something (I don’t even remember what) that caused Aiden and Ar and Elliot to start picking on me for gay-bashing (which I wasn’t!). They were only joking, but still, I didn’t quite know what to say and whether it would be okay for me to joke back and I got uncomfortable with it and so I just sat down on the bottom of the pool.
I’ve done it before, sit underwater to see how long I can stand it. I’ve done it in the pool and I’ve done it at the beach in Talos. I’m pretty sure that I could stay down for however long I wanted so long as I didn’t fall asleep. It takes a lot of concentration to do it, to maintain that level of invulnerability so that holding my breath that long doesn’t hurt me. I’ve told people I can breathe underwater, but that’s not the truth. I mean, maybe I can, but I can’t work up the courage to take that first big breath, that big gulp of water into my lungs. But I’ve stayed down for over a half-hour. After that I get claustrophobic and, like I said, if I don’t concentrate…
So sure, at first when I went under I looked at Mia and Jessie underwater. Gyah, saying that makes me feel kinda creepy, but any guy would do the same. It’s like in that part of the male brain that they call the lizard brain, the part that’s the most like an animal brain, where all your baser instincts and inclinations come from. You’re supposed to fight it, because humans are a higher level of intelligence, but if you see a nice pair of legs or good-looking girl in a bikini, you’re gonna look. So I looked. But it’s not like I was looking the whole time I was down there. I would’ve lost concentration.
I gave everyone time to move on to another subject of conversation and then popped up out of the water. By then, Lorne, Cassie, Roach, Etienne, Bronka – some of the ones who were playing D&D in the library – had come in. They all seemed to be in a good mood too. Everybody seemed to be having a good time.
A little while later, Krista came in.
I’d been almost afraid to talk to her after I had to cancel our date last week. It wasn’t fair for me to get in trouble and have to call it off. I figured that would finish my chances with her. But when I saw her I thought that maybe… maybe…
She sat on a bench near the pool and I got out and sat beside her.
Krista is pretty. Really pretty. She’s the kind of girl that you could grow up next door to and go to school with, but won’t notice until one day – BAM! – you see her, really see her. And after that, you look for her, and then you want to know her, and if you’re really lucky, you do. And I’m the lucky guy who’s gotten to know her.
The conversation around us had turned to the subject of parents, but I was talking to Krista now, almost whispering, “Forgive me for cancelling our date?”
She gave me this “Duh!” look and said, “Totally! No worries there.”
For a moment, it felt like things would go right again. Like maybe I’m not the Loser with a capital “L” I thought I was. Like maybe I would stop chasing someone I could never have and be happy with someone just as wonderful. Like maybe I fell in love right there, on the spot. She said yes to going out with me again. For a little bit it was like we were the only people in the room.
“I missed you while I was grounded,” I said. I didn’t include that I was afraid of talking to her, afraid that she would dump me before we ever got started.
"You’re trying to be cute," she said with a smirk that was cute itself.
“I can’t help it.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah, it’s like, in my genes.”
“DNA test-proven?”
“Absolutely.”
And things would have been great if I hadn’t glanced over at Mia. (Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!)
I glanced toward where she was still in a conversation with Ar and Roach, and somehow, the conversation had turned to whether or not it was ever the right thing to do to lie to people. While there might be some situations where lying is the better of two evils (like to spare somebody’s feelings), I was always taught it was better to tell the truth.
I heard Roach say, “Poker is a hellova game to learn. Teaches you how to lie which is important.”
Brook said, “Yeah, if you want to sell used cars later in life.”
Roach told her, “Don’t go ‘Leave it to Beaver’ on me. Lyin' is key in life. Small ones, big ones, some as big as your head.”
Mia said, “Lying is not as important as some people make it out to be.”
Ar said, “Still, a handy skill.”
I had to open my mouth. “Lyin' just gets you in trouble. You forget what lies you've told. Then you tell more lies to cover up lies.”
Roach said, “I'm not an idiot, Cas. It's easy to remember a good story if it's good and it’s believable.”
He calls me “Cas,” short for Casanova, the nickname he gave me.
And it went like that for a while, and we argued back and forth, Roach and Ar in favor of lying for any number of reasons, and me and Mia in favor of telling the truth. Brook saw points on both sides. Krista, sitting beside me still, stayed out of it.
Then Ar said to Mia, “So you're happier knowing that you're hot as hell, but the Disney princess act sometimes wears thin?”
Mia stood there and looked shocked for a moment then hugged her arms across her stomach. "Well, I'm sorry I can't be happy being a jerk to people like you, Ar. My one father raised me better than both of yours!"
And then she ran out. I stood up to follow.
I felt like a heel. Mia’s a big girl. She can handle Ar and Roach. But I stood up to follow her. I was gonna leave Krista to go after another girl.
“Ars, dude... not cool,” I said.
“Ar. It's Ar. For the love of all things imaginary.” He acted like he hadn’t done anything wrong.
“Still not cool,” I said.
“But honest,” he said like nothing had happened, “Better than a lie, right?”
I was getting riled. “That wasn’t the truth and it wasn’t a lie. It was just an insult.”
Ar said, “Going after her?’
“Cue Wyatt,” Roach said, letting me know that he knew I had almost chased after her.
Jessie said, “Be right back,” and went to see about Mia.
I looked at Roach and said, “Shut up.”
“Not the line you were thinkin’,” Roach said back.
“You’re the one standing, man,” Ar said.
“Sometimes you guys go too far,” I told them.
“I wouldn’t call that too far,” Ar said.
“Who decides too far?” Roach asked, and then added, “People have said worse to me and you don't seem to mind, bro. Why does it count as 'too far' for Mia?”
That wasn’t true. Roach doesn’t know the number of times I’ve defended him to other people.
I turned away and asked Krista, “Wanna go for a walk in the garden?”
That’s when things went from real bad to godawful.
Roach looked at Krista and said, “Canary—“ his nickname for her – “Your chest are lookin’ dynomite.”
“Honesty at work,” Ar said.
“Okay…” I said…
Roach: “Is. Are?”
Ar: “Is.”
Me: “Okay… you can stop now.”
Roach, still talking to Krista: “Well, you got two of them…”
Me: “You can stop now.”
Roach: “Oh... so, is honesty not always the best option then?”
I think Krista was about to laugh it off, but I was already too angry to laugh.
I got right in Roach’s face and asked him, “Do you want honesty?”
“Do you want your honesty out in the open?”
From behind us, Ar said, “Boys, just whip them out so we can all move on.”
Roach said, “I'll do 'Show and Tell' if you want, Cas.”
All of a sudden, I felt like Johnny Ringo in that climactic scene from “Tombstone”. You know, where he’s expecting Wyatt Earp to show up and instead it’s Doc Holliday, and Doc says, “I’ll be your huckleberry.” Roach was Doc Holliday. I was outgunned.
“You’re a jerk and people hate you.” That was my shot and it missed.
Roach grinned and nodded. “"Cool beans. You wanna do Mia."
Except he didn’t say “do”.
I don’t know what happened after that. Brook got between us. Roach backed away. Krista said something behind me, but I didn’t have the guts to look at her now.
I left. I found a place to hide. Brook came after me. I cried like a baby for about an hour, but Brook and me are the only ones who know that.
Ms. Wilson looks at me over her glasses and waits for me to start talking.
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Wyatt Wyborn
- Member
- Posts:196
- Joined:Fri Apr 08, 2011 5:49 pm
Re: Crushed, Crushing, and Crushes
(Other players' additions to my story threads are always welcomed, especially when the story involves other characters.)
-
Wyatt Wyborn
- Member
- Posts:196
- Joined:Fri Apr 08, 2011 5:49 pm
Re: Crushed, Crushing, and Crushes
The mall is the last place I want to be. My one date with Krista (Prom Night) included a great game of air-hockey in the arcade here. I had so much fun and she was so beautiful…
But here I am, and I am here because that crazy redhead somehow got my cell phone number.
She texted me: scarf boy? ru scarf boy?
I texted her back: my name is wyatt
She: u need a nu name
I: i have a name
She: we’ll talk about it. meet me at the mall in 10.
I: no. busy.
She: in 10. i have ur file.
My file? What file? I had no idea what she was talking about, but her dad worked for Crey, and if they had a file on me, I needed to see it. But why would they have a file on me? I’m pretty sure I’m not that big a level of threat to them. At least I don’t think...
So here I am, sitting in the food court with Heidi her two friends whom she hasn’t bothered to introduce me to. The three of them are dressed the same, although in different colors, with different accessories. Short-shorts and cotton smock tops, strappy sandals, and little, bright, metal purses at the end of long, thin straps. Heidi’s hair is pulled back in a ponytail and her skin is fake-tan orange. Her friends both have blonde hair and that same fake-tan, and they both also have their hair in ponytails. One of the kids from school is eyeing me from the pizza stand and I’m pretty sure this will just add to my already questionable reputation.
Heidi and her friends are talking. She hasn’t said more than, “Hi, Scarf Boy,” since I sat down. But she did make sure I noticed the large manila envelope sitting in front of her. It has a white label with big black letters spelling, “Wyborn, Wyatt K.”
Suddenly Heidi says, “Wyatt here needs a name. Besides Scarf Boy, I mean.”
“I have a name,” I say. “Wyatt.”
Heidi waves that off, saying, “Bad guys aren’t intimidated by the name ‘Wyatt’ unless it’s followed by ‘Earp’.”
Her friends giggle.
I hate Wyatt Earp jokes. My mom picked my name because of that movie Tombstone. My middle name is “Kurt”. I could have been named “Kurt Russell Wyborn”, except my dad was jealous of Kurt Russell, or so my mom says.
“Let me worry about that,” I say, which gets me a kinda cute eye-roll from her. I point to the envelope. “I reckon that’s the file.”
“Reckon it is,” Heidi says, mocking my accent. She looks around and her eyes narrow. Her whole aspect changes and suddenly she seems all business. “Let’s walk,” she says, and stands up.
Heidi’s two friends and I follow. I pass them and come up beside her. She has the envelope pressed to her chest and I’m really tempted to just grab it – the envelope, I’m saying.
“Essential Spider-Man, Volume Eight,” she says.
That’s so out of nowhere that I can’t even ask what she’s talking about. I turn to look at her friends as if they could explain it to me, but they’re oblivious to us and are chatting away about some designer bag that’s hanging in the display window of the store we’re walking past.
“You’ve a Spider-Man fan, right?” she asks in a way that lets me know she already knows the answer.
“Yeah,” I answer anyway.
“You’re read it right?”
The Marvel Essential books are collections of old, old comic books from the 60’s and 70’s, mostly. They focus on a single character or title. They’re really good because back then people were really interested in super-heroes. There were fewer of them – of us – in real life in those days, so there was a big demand for stories about then, even if the stories and the superheroes were made up. Nowadays, there ain’t nearly as many superhero comic books as there used to be. They – we – are all over the place. Even Charlotte has a couple of meta-powered people running around with capes. The big-selling comics now are about cowboys and knights and ninjas and pirates…
I tried to remember exactly what storylines were collected in Essential Spider-Man, Volume Eight.
“Yeah,” I said, “I’ve read it. It’s the one with the Death of Gwen Stacy.”
The Death of Gwen Stacy was a big story that fanboys from back in the day still talk about. Gwen was Peter Parker’s girlfriend. The Green Goblin threw her off a bridge. Spider-Man shoots a web to catch her before she splats, but in doing so, he causes her neck to snap. It’s really sad. A real downer. After that, Peter Parker fell in love with Mary Jane Watson, and the rest is history.
Heidi nods, “That’s it. That’s your problem.”
“What’s my problem?”
“You and your girlfriends. The serious girl with white hair and boobs and the skinny girl who likes to have fun and laugh a lot.”
“How --?”
“Oh, come on. I’ve seen you follow the white-haired one – let’s call her Gwen’ – around the mall, watching her, doing puppy-eyes when you think no one is looking. She does puppy eyes back sometimes, you know when you’re not looking. And when her boyfriend is not looking.”
“That’s not –“
“Oh yes it is. And then there’s the other one – let’s call her ‘MJ’, even though she doesn’t have red hair. I was leaving here when I saw you come in together after your prom or whatever it was – you were both dressed up. I’ve seen you together at the boardwalk in Talos too. No puppy eyes, but you looked like you were having fun.”
“So?”
“You should do what Spider-Man did – kill the not-fun girlfriend so you can be with the fun one.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Am I? Tell me ‘Gwen’ isn’t keeping you from being with ‘MJ’.”
“I’m not with either one of them.”
She stops and turns to face me. “Oh?” she says, “Now that is really interesting.”
Her friends stop a few feet behind us. One of them holds her hand over her mouth and quietly says something to the other one. They giggle. They always giggle.
I’m getting tired of Heidi’s games and decide to cut to the chase. “What do you want from me?” I ask.
As if that is a cue, Heidi plants both of her hands on my chest and shoves. I find myself falling backward through a door into—
The women’s room! She’s pushed me into the women’s restroom!
As the door shuts, I see her two friends peeking through, still giggling.
“What the h--?
“Heck? Or Hell? Which is it?” she says.
The momentum of her shove nearly put my butt on the floor, but I’m still on my feet and getting ready to shoulder past her when she says, “You can’t leave.”
“What?” I say.
“You heard me. You can’t leave. You know that I can hijack your powers and stop you.”
I freeze where I am and nod. She’s right. She can do that.
Heidi drops the envelope to the floor. She steps closer, grabs two handfuls of my tee-shirt and says, “You, on the other hand, could easily have resisted little ol’ me when I pushed you in here.”
Buh—
“So you actually wanted to be alone with me.”
“What!? No!” I—
“What do I want from you?”
What? Where did that come from?
She smirks and repeats, “You asked what I want from you.”
Oh. Yeah. I did.
“How about a kiss?” she asks. “If you want to give me something – trade something for this envelope – how about a kiss?”
Gyah! Does every stupid thing I say to people have to come back to haunt me? A few days ago I asked Mia the same thing, in almost the same way.
“I… can’t.” I’m stammering.
“You… can’t?” She twists her fists into my shirt. “Why?”
“I’m…” I can’t say it. It sounds too unbelievably lame.
“You’re…” she says, letting it stretch as she thinks it over. “… saving your first kiss for someone special?”
BINGO! Dangit!
Heidi feigns a hurt expression and says, “And am I not special?”
How can girls do this stuff to me? How!?
There’s a noise at the door. It opens a crack. I hear one of her friends say, “Sorry. This restroom is out-of-order.”
Heidi pulls on my shirt and lifts herself on tiptoe. “If you save yourself, Scarf Boy, you may never get kissed.”
A feminine laugh makes its way through the small slit of open door and a slender hand reaches in and turns off the light switch. Then the door closes and we’re alone in the dark.
But here I am, and I am here because that crazy redhead somehow got my cell phone number.
She texted me: scarf boy? ru scarf boy?
I texted her back: my name is wyatt
She: u need a nu name
I: i have a name
She: we’ll talk about it. meet me at the mall in 10.
I: no. busy.
She: in 10. i have ur file.
My file? What file? I had no idea what she was talking about, but her dad worked for Crey, and if they had a file on me, I needed to see it. But why would they have a file on me? I’m pretty sure I’m not that big a level of threat to them. At least I don’t think...
So here I am, sitting in the food court with Heidi her two friends whom she hasn’t bothered to introduce me to. The three of them are dressed the same, although in different colors, with different accessories. Short-shorts and cotton smock tops, strappy sandals, and little, bright, metal purses at the end of long, thin straps. Heidi’s hair is pulled back in a ponytail and her skin is fake-tan orange. Her friends both have blonde hair and that same fake-tan, and they both also have their hair in ponytails. One of the kids from school is eyeing me from the pizza stand and I’m pretty sure this will just add to my already questionable reputation.
Heidi and her friends are talking. She hasn’t said more than, “Hi, Scarf Boy,” since I sat down. But she did make sure I noticed the large manila envelope sitting in front of her. It has a white label with big black letters spelling, “Wyborn, Wyatt K.”
Suddenly Heidi says, “Wyatt here needs a name. Besides Scarf Boy, I mean.”
“I have a name,” I say. “Wyatt.”
Heidi waves that off, saying, “Bad guys aren’t intimidated by the name ‘Wyatt’ unless it’s followed by ‘Earp’.”
Her friends giggle.
I hate Wyatt Earp jokes. My mom picked my name because of that movie Tombstone. My middle name is “Kurt”. I could have been named “Kurt Russell Wyborn”, except my dad was jealous of Kurt Russell, or so my mom says.
“Let me worry about that,” I say, which gets me a kinda cute eye-roll from her. I point to the envelope. “I reckon that’s the file.”
“Reckon it is,” Heidi says, mocking my accent. She looks around and her eyes narrow. Her whole aspect changes and suddenly she seems all business. “Let’s walk,” she says, and stands up.
Heidi’s two friends and I follow. I pass them and come up beside her. She has the envelope pressed to her chest and I’m really tempted to just grab it – the envelope, I’m saying.
“Essential Spider-Man, Volume Eight,” she says.
That’s so out of nowhere that I can’t even ask what she’s talking about. I turn to look at her friends as if they could explain it to me, but they’re oblivious to us and are chatting away about some designer bag that’s hanging in the display window of the store we’re walking past.
“You’ve a Spider-Man fan, right?” she asks in a way that lets me know she already knows the answer.
“Yeah,” I answer anyway.
“You’re read it right?”
The Marvel Essential books are collections of old, old comic books from the 60’s and 70’s, mostly. They focus on a single character or title. They’re really good because back then people were really interested in super-heroes. There were fewer of them – of us – in real life in those days, so there was a big demand for stories about then, even if the stories and the superheroes were made up. Nowadays, there ain’t nearly as many superhero comic books as there used to be. They – we – are all over the place. Even Charlotte has a couple of meta-powered people running around with capes. The big-selling comics now are about cowboys and knights and ninjas and pirates…
I tried to remember exactly what storylines were collected in Essential Spider-Man, Volume Eight.
“Yeah,” I said, “I’ve read it. It’s the one with the Death of Gwen Stacy.”
The Death of Gwen Stacy was a big story that fanboys from back in the day still talk about. Gwen was Peter Parker’s girlfriend. The Green Goblin threw her off a bridge. Spider-Man shoots a web to catch her before she splats, but in doing so, he causes her neck to snap. It’s really sad. A real downer. After that, Peter Parker fell in love with Mary Jane Watson, and the rest is history.
Heidi nods, “That’s it. That’s your problem.”
“What’s my problem?”
“You and your girlfriends. The serious girl with white hair and boobs and the skinny girl who likes to have fun and laugh a lot.”
“How --?”
“Oh, come on. I’ve seen you follow the white-haired one – let’s call her Gwen’ – around the mall, watching her, doing puppy-eyes when you think no one is looking. She does puppy eyes back sometimes, you know when you’re not looking. And when her boyfriend is not looking.”
“That’s not –“
“Oh yes it is. And then there’s the other one – let’s call her ‘MJ’, even though she doesn’t have red hair. I was leaving here when I saw you come in together after your prom or whatever it was – you were both dressed up. I’ve seen you together at the boardwalk in Talos too. No puppy eyes, but you looked like you were having fun.”
“So?”
“You should do what Spider-Man did – kill the not-fun girlfriend so you can be with the fun one.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Am I? Tell me ‘Gwen’ isn’t keeping you from being with ‘MJ’.”
“I’m not with either one of them.”
She stops and turns to face me. “Oh?” she says, “Now that is really interesting.”
Her friends stop a few feet behind us. One of them holds her hand over her mouth and quietly says something to the other one. They giggle. They always giggle.
I’m getting tired of Heidi’s games and decide to cut to the chase. “What do you want from me?” I ask.
As if that is a cue, Heidi plants both of her hands on my chest and shoves. I find myself falling backward through a door into—
The women’s room! She’s pushed me into the women’s restroom!
As the door shuts, I see her two friends peeking through, still giggling.
“What the h--?
“Heck? Or Hell? Which is it?” she says.
The momentum of her shove nearly put my butt on the floor, but I’m still on my feet and getting ready to shoulder past her when she says, “You can’t leave.”
“What?” I say.
“You heard me. You can’t leave. You know that I can hijack your powers and stop you.”
I freeze where I am and nod. She’s right. She can do that.
Heidi drops the envelope to the floor. She steps closer, grabs two handfuls of my tee-shirt and says, “You, on the other hand, could easily have resisted little ol’ me when I pushed you in here.”
Buh—
“So you actually wanted to be alone with me.”
“What!? No!” I—
“What do I want from you?”
What? Where did that come from?
She smirks and repeats, “You asked what I want from you.”
Oh. Yeah. I did.
“How about a kiss?” she asks. “If you want to give me something – trade something for this envelope – how about a kiss?”
Gyah! Does every stupid thing I say to people have to come back to haunt me? A few days ago I asked Mia the same thing, in almost the same way.
“I… can’t.” I’m stammering.
“You… can’t?” She twists her fists into my shirt. “Why?”
“I’m…” I can’t say it. It sounds too unbelievably lame.
“You’re…” she says, letting it stretch as she thinks it over. “… saving your first kiss for someone special?”
BINGO! Dangit!
Heidi feigns a hurt expression and says, “And am I not special?”
How can girls do this stuff to me? How!?
There’s a noise at the door. It opens a crack. I hear one of her friends say, “Sorry. This restroom is out-of-order.”
Heidi pulls on my shirt and lifts herself on tiptoe. “If you save yourself, Scarf Boy, you may never get kissed.”
A feminine laugh makes its way through the small slit of open door and a slender hand reaches in and turns off the light switch. Then the door closes and we’re alone in the dark.
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Wyatt Wyborn
- Member
- Posts:196
- Joined:Fri Apr 08, 2011 5:49 pm
Re: Crushed, Crushing, and Crushes
I had so much to think about that when I got back to school I put the manila packet under my pillow and left it for later. It was probably just her way of getting me to come to the mall. I’m pretty sure the whole thing was planned out. A seduction.
Do you still call it that when all you do is kiss?
“No, no – stop.”
I stopped.
“You’re going to make my lips swell like that.”
I didn’t know what to say. I felt so… inexperienced.
“You don’t suck. I know it’s called ‘sucking face’ but you don’t. You… press.”
She pressed her lips to mine again and I pressed back. It wasn’t like I sucked on her lips hard – just a little – I mean, I knew you didn’t go at it like you’re sucking juice out of an orange – and it turns out that the lip action was pretty much the same as that – but no sucking, no sucking at all, until the very end where you make your lips smack together as they part, and then it’s almost involuntary because it’s like your mouth isn’t ready to break it up and it’s trying to hold on.
In the dark I couldn’t see her face. I could just hear her and feel her. She pressed herself against me and I could feel her chest against my chest through our clothes, her softness against the hardness of my muscles. She wasn’t wearing a bra.
“Much better,” she said.
We kissed again. She parted her lips and I did the same. My brain was yelling, Don’t do it! but it was like everything below my brain wasn’t listening. By the time our tongues were swirling around together I think my brain had given up.
I really don’t understand what happened. I didn’t like Heidi. I still don’t like Heidi. If you look up the word “like” in the dictionary, and apply all of the definitions to how I feel/felt about Heidi, none of them would apply. Not a one. Nada. Nil.
But at the end of that juicy, slobbery, tongue-twirling lip-lock she said, “Mmm… you’re pretty good,” and it was like there was no other girl in the world at that moment. No Krista. No Mia. Just this one I was with that I didn’t even want. A rose in the fisted glove.
All we did was kiss. Serious. That’s it. No sweet talk. No lovey-dovey. It was like… she was educating me. Ugh! That sounds bad. But that’s what it felt like. Like a crash-course in the fine art of kissing.
The whole rendezvous lasted all of maybe ten minutes before one of her friends opened the door and said, “Janitor coming.”
The lights came back on and Heidi picked up the manila envelope and slapped it into my chest.
“Call me,” she said and walked out into the mall.
I followed her out, ignoring the confused and then angry expression that the janitor gave us.
Brook and Roach both say she’s not done with me, that she’s gonna play me a little bit more, maybe make me fall for her and then dump me like last Sunday’s leftovers. But I don’t think so. I think she’s done with me.
I thought I was done with her too, but when I finally take the packet from under my pillow, open it, and dump its contents on my bed, I’m not so sure. I look at the pile of stuff: some photos, a CD-case, some black and white photo copies of magazine articles, and an empty birth-control pill box. Looking at them closer, the articles are about a hero called Rototype who is also in some of the photographs; other photographs are of young women, one of them bearing a strong resemblance to Heidi. Another one is a photo of my mom. The brand of birth-control pills is SeasoNil, the brand my mom used until she had a miscarriage when I was in fifth grade.
Weird.
My first thought is that this is just Heidi playing more games, but how would she know what kind of birth-control my mom was on years ago?
I open up my cheap, used laptop and put the cd in. No autorun starts up, so I explore the files. The file-names all start with “prj8” followed by the date. Like “prj8-10-15-1995”. The file extension is one I’m unfamiliar with, and googling doesn’t tell me what kind of program will open them.
I take out my phone and text Heidi.
Me: need ur help.
Heidi: okay. meet me at the mall in ten.
Me: cant. school.
Heidi: tomorrow morning. saturday my house.
I pause before I text anything else. At the mall she told me where she lives. It’s in Founders. The high-rent district. I feel like I’m walking into a trap.
Me: okay. 8oclock.
Heidi: i'll be ready.
Yeah. I bet you will.
Do you still call it that when all you do is kiss?
“No, no – stop.”
I stopped.
“You’re going to make my lips swell like that.”
I didn’t know what to say. I felt so… inexperienced.
“You don’t suck. I know it’s called ‘sucking face’ but you don’t. You… press.”
She pressed her lips to mine again and I pressed back. It wasn’t like I sucked on her lips hard – just a little – I mean, I knew you didn’t go at it like you’re sucking juice out of an orange – and it turns out that the lip action was pretty much the same as that – but no sucking, no sucking at all, until the very end where you make your lips smack together as they part, and then it’s almost involuntary because it’s like your mouth isn’t ready to break it up and it’s trying to hold on.
In the dark I couldn’t see her face. I could just hear her and feel her. She pressed herself against me and I could feel her chest against my chest through our clothes, her softness against the hardness of my muscles. She wasn’t wearing a bra.
“Much better,” she said.
We kissed again. She parted her lips and I did the same. My brain was yelling, Don’t do it! but it was like everything below my brain wasn’t listening. By the time our tongues were swirling around together I think my brain had given up.
I really don’t understand what happened. I didn’t like Heidi. I still don’t like Heidi. If you look up the word “like” in the dictionary, and apply all of the definitions to how I feel/felt about Heidi, none of them would apply. Not a one. Nada. Nil.
But at the end of that juicy, slobbery, tongue-twirling lip-lock she said, “Mmm… you’re pretty good,” and it was like there was no other girl in the world at that moment. No Krista. No Mia. Just this one I was with that I didn’t even want. A rose in the fisted glove.
All we did was kiss. Serious. That’s it. No sweet talk. No lovey-dovey. It was like… she was educating me. Ugh! That sounds bad. But that’s what it felt like. Like a crash-course in the fine art of kissing.
The whole rendezvous lasted all of maybe ten minutes before one of her friends opened the door and said, “Janitor coming.”
The lights came back on and Heidi picked up the manila envelope and slapped it into my chest.
“Call me,” she said and walked out into the mall.
I followed her out, ignoring the confused and then angry expression that the janitor gave us.
Brook and Roach both say she’s not done with me, that she’s gonna play me a little bit more, maybe make me fall for her and then dump me like last Sunday’s leftovers. But I don’t think so. I think she’s done with me.
I thought I was done with her too, but when I finally take the packet from under my pillow, open it, and dump its contents on my bed, I’m not so sure. I look at the pile of stuff: some photos, a CD-case, some black and white photo copies of magazine articles, and an empty birth-control pill box. Looking at them closer, the articles are about a hero called Rototype who is also in some of the photographs; other photographs are of young women, one of them bearing a strong resemblance to Heidi. Another one is a photo of my mom. The brand of birth-control pills is SeasoNil, the brand my mom used until she had a miscarriage when I was in fifth grade.
Weird.
My first thought is that this is just Heidi playing more games, but how would she know what kind of birth-control my mom was on years ago?
I open up my cheap, used laptop and put the cd in. No autorun starts up, so I explore the files. The file-names all start with “prj8” followed by the date. Like “prj8-10-15-1995”. The file extension is one I’m unfamiliar with, and googling doesn’t tell me what kind of program will open them.
I take out my phone and text Heidi.
Me: need ur help.
Heidi: okay. meet me at the mall in ten.
Me: cant. school.
Heidi: tomorrow morning. saturday my house.
I pause before I text anything else. At the mall she told me where she lives. It’s in Founders. The high-rent district. I feel like I’m walking into a trap.
Me: okay. 8oclock.
Heidi: i'll be ready.
Yeah. I bet you will.
-
Wyatt Wyborn
- Member
- Posts:196
- Joined:Fri Apr 08, 2011 5:49 pm
Re: Crushed, Crushing, and Crushes
(Warning: This post contains explicit depictions of breakfast cereal and the effects spilled milk has on a young man's imagination. Serious -- mild sexual innuendo is contained herein.)
This is crazy. It’s Saturday. I should be in bed ‘til ten at the earliest. Especially since I laid awake all night trying to puzzle this thing out. I really do hope it’s some sort of stupid game that Heidi is playing with me. It’s bad enough that I’m a mutant. Do I also have to be part of some conspiracy theory too? Wyatt Wyborn – Mystery Mutant!
I find her place without any trouble. I got on Google Maps and pinpointed the exact building. My plan was to leap in, land on a ledge and tap on a window, but there looked to be MIB guards stationed on the roof, so I hit the sidewalk about two blocks away and walk to the front door. It’s exactly eight a.m. when I arrive at the door of her building, mystery-packet in hand.
I barely have my hand on the buzzer when I hear Heidi’s voice come over to the speaker to say, “Come on up! Sixth floor!” She must be watching me from a window.
The elevator opens up straight into Heidi’s apartment, and she’s right there to greet me.
She looks like she just got out of bed. Her hair falls across her shoulders in un-brushed tangles of red. She’s wearing a dark purple tee-shirt that isn’t quite long enough. Her legs and feet are bare and I can see the fine lines of the veins in her perfect porcelain skin.
I pull my eyes away and look around the room we’re in.
The room is huge. It’s bigger than the house I grew up in. White carpet and white furniture. White walls and white blinds on the windows. Red and black throw-pillows on the sofa and chairs add a little color, and a large painting of cowboy riding a galloping painted pony breaks up the monotony of the only wall that isn’t broken by a window or doorway.
“C’mon in,” she says, “Daddy’s not here. We have the place to ourselves.”
I watch the “DKNY” on her bottom twitch side to side as she leads me across the living room to a little breakfast nook with a chair and a small, half-round table where a half-eaten bowl of corn flakes is waiting for her. The window above the table looks out onto the street and I can see route I walked to get here.
“Okay,” she says and gets my attention back to her. She holds the cereal bowl in one hand and lifts the spoon to her lips with the other.
“Okay,” I say as a drop of milk drips from the spoon and runs teasingly down her chin.
“Wyatt…?” she says – and says more – but I’m hypnotized by that drop of milk as it beads on the smooth round tip of her chin.
“What?” I have no idea what we’re talking about but I cannot stop watching as the droplet gathers, strains to hold its own weight, and falls, making a dark stain on the soft curve of her shirt.
She laughs. “Are you all right? Did you take a headshot from one of those Nemesis robots on the way here?”
I snap back to reality. “What?! No! I—“
She laughs again. “Okay, then,” she says and I think she’s expecting me to say something in return.
“Oh! Yeah – this!” I hold up the packet for her to see. “I need your help with this.”
“Ah,” she says, “let’s take that to my room.” Then she lifts the bowl to her lips and drinks the rest of the milk out of it. A small stream escapes at the corner of her mouth and she tips the bowl down and darts her tongue out to catch it but misses and it falls to splatter on her pale pink thigh. She grabs a napkin from the table and daubs it off.
I have to turn away.
“Something wrong?” she asks.
I shake my head and we go to her room.
It doesn’t look like the room of a fifteen year old girl. It looks like it was decorated when she was ten and hasn’t been changed since. Pink and white, with daisy wallpaper. In the corner there’s a white desk with a lime-green-with-hot-pink-flowers decorated laptop sitting on top of it. There are Snuggiepuffs on the bed. I stifle a laugh and she notices.
“Daddy still thinks I’m his innocent little girl. I try not to shatter that illusion.”
I nod, unsure of what to say to that, and she smiles and sort of falls onto her bed, pulling her legs up beneath her. Then she pats the bed beside her and I sit down too.
“What did you think of that?” she asks.
“I’m not sure what to think. I guess my first question is – is it legit? This isn’t a setup or something?”
“To lure you into my boudoir?” She laughs and it makes me feel stupid for suggesting it.
“I – well… that whole thing at the mall…”
“Okay, maybe the mall was a setup, but I didn’t hear you complaining. This isn’t. You called me, remember?”
I answer with another nod and ask the question that’s been burning at me the most: “Where did you get this stuff?”
She grins. “A courier brought it this week. Daddy wasn’t here so I signed for it.”
“And he’s not going to be mad that you gave it to me?”
“He never gets mad at me.”
“So… what are you going to tell him when he asks about it?”
“He already did. I told him I was taking it to him at work and was ambushed by some Fifth Column types.”
“Wow – you’re really good at lying.”
Most people would take that as an insult, but she giggles and says, “I really am.” Then she takes the envelope from me and says, “What’s in it?”
“You didn’t look?” I ask.
“No. It had your name on it. I didn’t think it was fair of Daddy to order an investigation on you after you guys came to an agreement. It made it seem like he might, maybe, come after you or something. But, no, I didn’t look.”
That surprises me. I never took her as the type to consider something like fairness.
I open the envelope and dump the contents between us on the bed. She looks through it all, pauses when she sees the photo of the woman who bears a resemblance to her.
“Why is my mom in your folder?”
“My mom’s in there too, along with six other women.”
“Weird.”
“Yeah.”
We discuss the birth-control pills, but Heidi has no idea if her mom even used birth-control. She never knew her. Heidi’s mom died while having her.
We both find the article about Rototype interesting. He operated in Kansas City from the early 80’s to the mid-90’s. It turns out that his powers were very similar to Heidi’s, except he didn’t’ seem to have to “hijack” someone else’s powers. He just seemed to have different powers from day to day. There were photos of him shooting beams from his eyes; photos of him lifting a bus; photos of him with scales and a long tail like a lizard. The article even speculated that sometimes he was a man, and sometimes he was a woman. He seems to have disappeared around 1996 and no one has heard from him since.
After looking at all of that, we’re both quiet for a little while. And then she asks, “What’s on the CD?”
“I’m not sure. I can’t find the file extension on the internet. But they look like they’re from 1994 to 1996, if those are dates in the file names, and I think they are.” After which I give her an example file name.
“Makes sense. And ‘prj8’… Project 8?”
“Eight women…?”
“Yeah.”
She opens the disc case and goes to the desk in the corner and inserts the CD into the drive. Then she plugs a flash drive into the USB.
“I want to keep a copy. Maybe I can figure it out.”
She turns and does this little jump and lands belly down on the bed, bouncing me and the stack of papers around. She props on her elbows and her eyes fall again on the photo of her mom.
“I’ve got pictures of her,” Heidi says, “but I’ve never seen this one. She’s pretty. Beautiful.”
“You look a lot like her.”
Heidi smiles at me and I think it’s the first time I’ve ever seen her look vulnerable. She rolls onto her back and her shirt rides up exposing a perfect “innie” navel.
“That was nice of you to say that,” she says and her eyes are glistening.
“It’s the truth,” I say.
She reaches for my hand and I give it to her and she pulls me down beside her.
The part of my brain that has good sense is screaming at me to run. RUN! But my body says stay and the part of my brain that gets me into trouble says, This is gonna be good.
I put my arms around her and pull her close and kiss her. We kiss until she has to come up for air and then we kiss again until—
“What was that?” she says, holding her breath to listen.
“What was what?” I didn’t hear anything.
“Daddy’s home!”
“What? I didn’t hear—“
“He is!” She gets up, gathers all of my papers and grabs the flash drive out of the laptop. “Quick! The window!”
She throws open the sash and gives me a shove as I’m climbing out. I land hard on the sidewalk below. The envelope with all the papers and photos – and now the flash drive – lands beside me soon after.
This is crazy. It’s Saturday. I should be in bed ‘til ten at the earliest. Especially since I laid awake all night trying to puzzle this thing out. I really do hope it’s some sort of stupid game that Heidi is playing with me. It’s bad enough that I’m a mutant. Do I also have to be part of some conspiracy theory too? Wyatt Wyborn – Mystery Mutant!
I find her place without any trouble. I got on Google Maps and pinpointed the exact building. My plan was to leap in, land on a ledge and tap on a window, but there looked to be MIB guards stationed on the roof, so I hit the sidewalk about two blocks away and walk to the front door. It’s exactly eight a.m. when I arrive at the door of her building, mystery-packet in hand.
I barely have my hand on the buzzer when I hear Heidi’s voice come over to the speaker to say, “Come on up! Sixth floor!” She must be watching me from a window.
The elevator opens up straight into Heidi’s apartment, and she’s right there to greet me.
She looks like she just got out of bed. Her hair falls across her shoulders in un-brushed tangles of red. She’s wearing a dark purple tee-shirt that isn’t quite long enough. Her legs and feet are bare and I can see the fine lines of the veins in her perfect porcelain skin.
I pull my eyes away and look around the room we’re in.
The room is huge. It’s bigger than the house I grew up in. White carpet and white furniture. White walls and white blinds on the windows. Red and black throw-pillows on the sofa and chairs add a little color, and a large painting of cowboy riding a galloping painted pony breaks up the monotony of the only wall that isn’t broken by a window or doorway.
“C’mon in,” she says, “Daddy’s not here. We have the place to ourselves.”
I watch the “DKNY” on her bottom twitch side to side as she leads me across the living room to a little breakfast nook with a chair and a small, half-round table where a half-eaten bowl of corn flakes is waiting for her. The window above the table looks out onto the street and I can see route I walked to get here.
“Okay,” she says and gets my attention back to her. She holds the cereal bowl in one hand and lifts the spoon to her lips with the other.
“Okay,” I say as a drop of milk drips from the spoon and runs teasingly down her chin.
“Wyatt…?” she says – and says more – but I’m hypnotized by that drop of milk as it beads on the smooth round tip of her chin.
“What?” I have no idea what we’re talking about but I cannot stop watching as the droplet gathers, strains to hold its own weight, and falls, making a dark stain on the soft curve of her shirt.
She laughs. “Are you all right? Did you take a headshot from one of those Nemesis robots on the way here?”
I snap back to reality. “What?! No! I—“
She laughs again. “Okay, then,” she says and I think she’s expecting me to say something in return.
“Oh! Yeah – this!” I hold up the packet for her to see. “I need your help with this.”
“Ah,” she says, “let’s take that to my room.” Then she lifts the bowl to her lips and drinks the rest of the milk out of it. A small stream escapes at the corner of her mouth and she tips the bowl down and darts her tongue out to catch it but misses and it falls to splatter on her pale pink thigh. She grabs a napkin from the table and daubs it off.
I have to turn away.
“Something wrong?” she asks.
I shake my head and we go to her room.
It doesn’t look like the room of a fifteen year old girl. It looks like it was decorated when she was ten and hasn’t been changed since. Pink and white, with daisy wallpaper. In the corner there’s a white desk with a lime-green-with-hot-pink-flowers decorated laptop sitting on top of it. There are Snuggiepuffs on the bed. I stifle a laugh and she notices.
“Daddy still thinks I’m his innocent little girl. I try not to shatter that illusion.”
I nod, unsure of what to say to that, and she smiles and sort of falls onto her bed, pulling her legs up beneath her. Then she pats the bed beside her and I sit down too.
“What did you think of that?” she asks.
“I’m not sure what to think. I guess my first question is – is it legit? This isn’t a setup or something?”
“To lure you into my boudoir?” She laughs and it makes me feel stupid for suggesting it.
“I – well… that whole thing at the mall…”
“Okay, maybe the mall was a setup, but I didn’t hear you complaining. This isn’t. You called me, remember?”
I answer with another nod and ask the question that’s been burning at me the most: “Where did you get this stuff?”
She grins. “A courier brought it this week. Daddy wasn’t here so I signed for it.”
“And he’s not going to be mad that you gave it to me?”
“He never gets mad at me.”
“So… what are you going to tell him when he asks about it?”
“He already did. I told him I was taking it to him at work and was ambushed by some Fifth Column types.”
“Wow – you’re really good at lying.”
Most people would take that as an insult, but she giggles and says, “I really am.” Then she takes the envelope from me and says, “What’s in it?”
“You didn’t look?” I ask.
“No. It had your name on it. I didn’t think it was fair of Daddy to order an investigation on you after you guys came to an agreement. It made it seem like he might, maybe, come after you or something. But, no, I didn’t look.”
That surprises me. I never took her as the type to consider something like fairness.
I open the envelope and dump the contents between us on the bed. She looks through it all, pauses when she sees the photo of the woman who bears a resemblance to her.
“Why is my mom in your folder?”
“My mom’s in there too, along with six other women.”
“Weird.”
“Yeah.”
We discuss the birth-control pills, but Heidi has no idea if her mom even used birth-control. She never knew her. Heidi’s mom died while having her.
We both find the article about Rototype interesting. He operated in Kansas City from the early 80’s to the mid-90’s. It turns out that his powers were very similar to Heidi’s, except he didn’t’ seem to have to “hijack” someone else’s powers. He just seemed to have different powers from day to day. There were photos of him shooting beams from his eyes; photos of him lifting a bus; photos of him with scales and a long tail like a lizard. The article even speculated that sometimes he was a man, and sometimes he was a woman. He seems to have disappeared around 1996 and no one has heard from him since.
After looking at all of that, we’re both quiet for a little while. And then she asks, “What’s on the CD?”
“I’m not sure. I can’t find the file extension on the internet. But they look like they’re from 1994 to 1996, if those are dates in the file names, and I think they are.” After which I give her an example file name.
“Makes sense. And ‘prj8’… Project 8?”
“Eight women…?”
“Yeah.”
She opens the disc case and goes to the desk in the corner and inserts the CD into the drive. Then she plugs a flash drive into the USB.
“I want to keep a copy. Maybe I can figure it out.”
She turns and does this little jump and lands belly down on the bed, bouncing me and the stack of papers around. She props on her elbows and her eyes fall again on the photo of her mom.
“I’ve got pictures of her,” Heidi says, “but I’ve never seen this one. She’s pretty. Beautiful.”
“You look a lot like her.”
Heidi smiles at me and I think it’s the first time I’ve ever seen her look vulnerable. She rolls onto her back and her shirt rides up exposing a perfect “innie” navel.
“That was nice of you to say that,” she says and her eyes are glistening.
“It’s the truth,” I say.
She reaches for my hand and I give it to her and she pulls me down beside her.
The part of my brain that has good sense is screaming at me to run. RUN! But my body says stay and the part of my brain that gets me into trouble says, This is gonna be good.
I put my arms around her and pull her close and kiss her. We kiss until she has to come up for air and then we kiss again until—
“What was that?” she says, holding her breath to listen.
“What was what?” I didn’t hear anything.
“Daddy’s home!”
“What? I didn’t hear—“
“He is!” She gets up, gathers all of my papers and grabs the flash drive out of the laptop. “Quick! The window!”
She throws open the sash and gives me a shove as I’m climbing out. I land hard on the sidewalk below. The envelope with all the papers and photos – and now the flash drive – lands beside me soon after.
-
Wyatt Wyborn
- Member
- Posts:196
- Joined:Fri Apr 08, 2011 5:49 pm
Re: Crushed, Crushing, and Crushes
I’m at the mall looking for Heidi. I really need to talk to her.
After I left her place this morning I crashed on my bunk for a couple of hours. When I woke up, I wondered if the whole thing had been a dream. Then I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and found the flash drive and plugged it into my computer. My computer is slooooow and it took forever for it to recognize the drive and open the file, but when it did, there were the files copied from the CD and then some – Heidi’s personal files. I know she gave me the flash drive because it was quicker than taking the disc out of her laptop, but did she realize there were other things on it?
One of the files was named “rate-a-boy”. It looked like a standard spreadsheet. I knew I shouldn’t open it but…
Column A was Name. Column B was Date. Column C was Location. Column D was Base, and under Column D there were four more columns labeled 1, 2, 3, and Home. There were a lot of entries. A lot of entries. One-hundred and thirty-two. Had she kissed that many boys? It seemed like a lot, even for Paragon City. I looked at the Date column and realize she had only been building this database for a little less than a year. One-hundred and thirty-two in under a year?
I moved to Column C. Was it where she met the guys or was it where she… did whatever with them? Either way, the mall was listed the most, followed by Spanky’s Boardwalk and then Overbrook Plaza. At least there was no mention of that weird club in the pocket universe…
Column D. Base. I always thought it was stupid to use baseball to describe sex, but it does simplify things. When I looked at the four subcolumns I felt a little sick. I was hoping there wouldn’t be any entries under “Home”, but there were. More than one. More than five.
In the subcolumns under Column D, there were numbers, from one to five. The higher the number under “1” the more likely there was a number listed under “2”. The higher in number in “2” the more likely there was a number in “3”. No one who rated less than a four under “3” got a rating under “Home”.
I didn’t want to think about this. Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t jealous. I mean, I don’t even like her, let alone like her. But… my first kiss… This was all kinda gross.
I found my name and saw that under Column D, Sub-column 1, I rated a “2”.
Now I felt really sick.
I need to talk to her. I need to let her know that she doesn’t mean anything to me and that I’m not going to let her just use me for her own amusement.
But Heidi’s not at the mall. Mia is. Mia, who doesn’t play games with me. Mia, whose face I see when I close my eyes at night.
Why couldn’t it have been Mia that I kissed?
After I left her place this morning I crashed on my bunk for a couple of hours. When I woke up, I wondered if the whole thing had been a dream. Then I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and found the flash drive and plugged it into my computer. My computer is slooooow and it took forever for it to recognize the drive and open the file, but when it did, there were the files copied from the CD and then some – Heidi’s personal files. I know she gave me the flash drive because it was quicker than taking the disc out of her laptop, but did she realize there were other things on it?
One of the files was named “rate-a-boy”. It looked like a standard spreadsheet. I knew I shouldn’t open it but…
Column A was Name. Column B was Date. Column C was Location. Column D was Base, and under Column D there were four more columns labeled 1, 2, 3, and Home. There were a lot of entries. A lot of entries. One-hundred and thirty-two. Had she kissed that many boys? It seemed like a lot, even for Paragon City. I looked at the Date column and realize she had only been building this database for a little less than a year. One-hundred and thirty-two in under a year?
I moved to Column C. Was it where she met the guys or was it where she… did whatever with them? Either way, the mall was listed the most, followed by Spanky’s Boardwalk and then Overbrook Plaza. At least there was no mention of that weird club in the pocket universe…
Column D. Base. I always thought it was stupid to use baseball to describe sex, but it does simplify things. When I looked at the four subcolumns I felt a little sick. I was hoping there wouldn’t be any entries under “Home”, but there were. More than one. More than five.
In the subcolumns under Column D, there were numbers, from one to five. The higher the number under “1” the more likely there was a number listed under “2”. The higher in number in “2” the more likely there was a number in “3”. No one who rated less than a four under “3” got a rating under “Home”.
I didn’t want to think about this. Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t jealous. I mean, I don’t even like her, let alone like her. But… my first kiss… This was all kinda gross.
I found my name and saw that under Column D, Sub-column 1, I rated a “2”.
Now I felt really sick.
I need to talk to her. I need to let her know that she doesn’t mean anything to me and that I’m not going to let her just use me for her own amusement.
But Heidi’s not at the mall. Mia is. Mia, who doesn’t play games with me. Mia, whose face I see when I close my eyes at night.
Why couldn’t it have been Mia that I kissed?
-
Wyatt Wyborn
- Member
- Posts:196
- Joined:Fri Apr 08, 2011 5:49 pm
Re: Crushed, Crushing, and Crushes
I barely made it through school today. I went out of my way not to talk to anyone. I skipped lunch and ate crackers in my dorm. I skipped out on a cheer meeting. Basically, I spent the whole day not talking to anyone and not making eye contact. It was just like back home. Somehow, it almost felt comfortable.
I’m so mad at Etienne that I can’t stand to think about it. Same with Cassie and Brook. I’m even madder at Mia.
And don’t ask – you don’t want to know.
After school, I went back to my room and pored over the stuff in the packet. It didn’t make sense to me that someone would send files to Heidi’s dad without sending him the program that would open them. So why wasn’t the program on the disc? But what if --?
I looked at my laptop. It’s still got XP on it. It’s old. It’s like ten years old. In tech years, that’s like a millennium. The dates in the file names are from 1995 through 1997. Windows 95.
Maybe there was no mystery program. Maybe it’s just an obsolete file-type. I got on the PC Archeology forums and left a question.
It only took four hours to get a reply, plus a link to a software emulator that would allow me to open them.
Jesus, I wish I was more of a geek.
I downloaded the software, installed it, and was ready to open a file when I stopped. Even if I was just a number to Heidi (and a low number at that) she still was a part of this and deserved to be there for the reveal. I texted her to meet me at the University library in Steel Canyon.
College girls are hot. I have nothing else to do while I wait for Heidi besides look at them. Some of them look back.
I ain’t got used to that yet. Back home most girls didn’t even give me a second glance, probably because I’d been that loser kid since sixth grade. Once you’re a loser kid, you’re always a loser kid; it’s how they relate to you because, well, to them that’s who you are. There are advantages to going to a new place where nobody knows you. Maybe that’s what’s gone wrong at Westbrook. They’ve all got to know me now.
A girl comes over and sits at the table beside me. She’s got a stack of books and an iPad. I’ve got my dinosaur of a laptop and House of Leaves.
“Oh! I love that book,” she says, “It’s so… awesome!”
There’s a 50/50 chance that she’s really read it. It’s a great book, but not exactly well-known, especially as it’s been out for a while. She’s probably just feeding me some baloney. I decide not to challenge her on it. Whatever she’s feeding me, I’m willing to eat it.
“Yeah,” I say.
“Are you a student here?”
No, I’m a high school sophomore, aka jailbait to you, babe.
“Yeah. Taking some summer courses. Gotta get any advantage you can these days.”
“Oh, totally.” she says, “Same here. I’m hoping to get a four-year degree in an actual four years.” She giggles and I like the sound of it. A pretty girl’s laugh is like a good guitar riff – it makes you want to see what the rest of the song is like.
“The thing I like about summer quarter is that it’s more laid back.” I don’t know. I’m winging it.
“I know! And like, for the summer I have a dorm all to myself – no roommate!”
“Yeah? That’s pretty sweet.”
“Want to come up to my room?”
Wait – what? Is it that easy in college? Makes me wish I could just skip the rest of high school…
“Um… yeah, that would be –“
“You bastard!”
College girl and I both snap our heads around and yep, Heidi has arrived.
“You,” she continues, “You gave me mono!”
Oh… no…
College Girl looks at me like I’m a cockroach who just crawled up her leg. She gathers her books and grabs up her iPad and leaves, giving me one more nasty cockroach look before disappearing around some shelves.
“Why did you do that?” I ask her. But I know the answer already.
“I did you a favor Wyatt. You don’t want to mess with a college girl. They’ll chew you up and spit you out and you’ll beg them to do it again.”
“So?”
“So, that’s my job.”
Despite myself, I laugh.
Heidi sits down and I open my laptop. I talk while it boots up. I explain to her about PC Archeology and how they linked me up with the right software to open these data files.
“Good detective work,” she says.
“Thanks,” I reply, “but it was the geeks at PCA that did all the work.”
“Pft! They probably knew it off the top of their heads. You were the one who had to figure out the right questions and the right people to ask.”
Even though I don’t like her, Heidi makes me feel better about myself than anyone else has lately.
My computer’s up so I plug in her flash drive. Heidi actually blushes when she sees her “rate-a-boy” among the other files.
“You saw that, huh?” she says.
“Yeah.”
Suddenly the need to look at the prj8 files doesn’t seem so immediate.
“You must think I’m a sl—“
“No!” Okay – when I first saw it, I did. And actually up until about two minutes ago, I did. “Not at all. I think it’s kinda cool that you’re that…” I can’t think of the word.
“Loose?” she adds with a smirk.
I laugh, and figure that’s the best reply I can give.
“I’m comfortable with my sexuality,” she says, and she looks almost shy as she says it. “That makes some people uncomfortable.”
I’m not comfortable discussing this, so I sidetrack by saying, “The only thing that makes me uncomfortable about it is my low rating.”
She smiles with that annoying smile she has, the one that makes it clear that she’s going to get her way no matter what and suddenly, I feel like I’m trapped in the womens room at the mall again.
“You want to boost your rating?”
I open my mouth to answer, to tell her I was just joking, but she’s already grabbed my wrist and is pulling me over to the Reference Department. I give a helpless glance back at my laptop and my book, abandoned on the table.
After twenty uninterrupted minutes (no one uses the Reference Department anymore, not with the internet) in which I not only smacked a sharp single to first, but was also attempting to steal second, Heidi ended it with a hope-inspiring, “Not here.” And we returned to the table where my forgotten laptop and book were still waiting.
“Okay, Cassanova,” she said, smoothing out her skirt and scooting her chair close enough so that her thigh pressed against mine, “let’s see what we see.”
I nod and click.
The screen fills with lines of information. Names, addresses, dates, times, and what look like medical records – inoculations and such. I do a search for my name, but come up empty.
“John Doe’s,” Heidi says, “They won’t use our names. They’ll use aliases.”
“So you feel like we’re on this list?”
“Isn’t that what this is all about?”
“Yeah.”
“Daddy would be able help us on this.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“This file was stolen from him, remember? He doesn’t like me already, remember?”
“Okay. So what do we do with information we can’t use.”
“I don’t know.”
We sit in silence for a while, looking at information that is no more useful to us now than it was when we couldn’t access it. Then I got an idea. I click “print preview”.
“Oh… wow.”
I think it’s cool that I made her go “oh, wow.”
There, at the top or the print preview, in the header section, is a name: Richard B. Cressman.
Heidi squeezes my thigh and says, “I think someone has just earned a chance to raise his score.”
I’m so mad at Etienne that I can’t stand to think about it. Same with Cassie and Brook. I’m even madder at Mia.
And don’t ask – you don’t want to know.
After school, I went back to my room and pored over the stuff in the packet. It didn’t make sense to me that someone would send files to Heidi’s dad without sending him the program that would open them. So why wasn’t the program on the disc? But what if --?
I looked at my laptop. It’s still got XP on it. It’s old. It’s like ten years old. In tech years, that’s like a millennium. The dates in the file names are from 1995 through 1997. Windows 95.
Maybe there was no mystery program. Maybe it’s just an obsolete file-type. I got on the PC Archeology forums and left a question.
It only took four hours to get a reply, plus a link to a software emulator that would allow me to open them.
Jesus, I wish I was more of a geek.
I downloaded the software, installed it, and was ready to open a file when I stopped. Even if I was just a number to Heidi (and a low number at that) she still was a part of this and deserved to be there for the reveal. I texted her to meet me at the University library in Steel Canyon.
College girls are hot. I have nothing else to do while I wait for Heidi besides look at them. Some of them look back.
I ain’t got used to that yet. Back home most girls didn’t even give me a second glance, probably because I’d been that loser kid since sixth grade. Once you’re a loser kid, you’re always a loser kid; it’s how they relate to you because, well, to them that’s who you are. There are advantages to going to a new place where nobody knows you. Maybe that’s what’s gone wrong at Westbrook. They’ve all got to know me now.
A girl comes over and sits at the table beside me. She’s got a stack of books and an iPad. I’ve got my dinosaur of a laptop and House of Leaves.
“Oh! I love that book,” she says, “It’s so… awesome!”
There’s a 50/50 chance that she’s really read it. It’s a great book, but not exactly well-known, especially as it’s been out for a while. She’s probably just feeding me some baloney. I decide not to challenge her on it. Whatever she’s feeding me, I’m willing to eat it.
“Yeah,” I say.
“Are you a student here?”
No, I’m a high school sophomore, aka jailbait to you, babe.
“Yeah. Taking some summer courses. Gotta get any advantage you can these days.”
“Oh, totally.” she says, “Same here. I’m hoping to get a four-year degree in an actual four years.” She giggles and I like the sound of it. A pretty girl’s laugh is like a good guitar riff – it makes you want to see what the rest of the song is like.
“The thing I like about summer quarter is that it’s more laid back.” I don’t know. I’m winging it.
“I know! And like, for the summer I have a dorm all to myself – no roommate!”
“Yeah? That’s pretty sweet.”
“Want to come up to my room?”
Wait – what? Is it that easy in college? Makes me wish I could just skip the rest of high school…
“Um… yeah, that would be –“
“You bastard!”
College girl and I both snap our heads around and yep, Heidi has arrived.
“You,” she continues, “You gave me mono!”
Oh… no…
College Girl looks at me like I’m a cockroach who just crawled up her leg. She gathers her books and grabs up her iPad and leaves, giving me one more nasty cockroach look before disappearing around some shelves.
“Why did you do that?” I ask her. But I know the answer already.
“I did you a favor Wyatt. You don’t want to mess with a college girl. They’ll chew you up and spit you out and you’ll beg them to do it again.”
“So?”
“So, that’s my job.”
Despite myself, I laugh.
Heidi sits down and I open my laptop. I talk while it boots up. I explain to her about PC Archeology and how they linked me up with the right software to open these data files.
“Good detective work,” she says.
“Thanks,” I reply, “but it was the geeks at PCA that did all the work.”
“Pft! They probably knew it off the top of their heads. You were the one who had to figure out the right questions and the right people to ask.”
Even though I don’t like her, Heidi makes me feel better about myself than anyone else has lately.
My computer’s up so I plug in her flash drive. Heidi actually blushes when she sees her “rate-a-boy” among the other files.
“You saw that, huh?” she says.
“Yeah.”
Suddenly the need to look at the prj8 files doesn’t seem so immediate.
“You must think I’m a sl—“
“No!” Okay – when I first saw it, I did. And actually up until about two minutes ago, I did. “Not at all. I think it’s kinda cool that you’re that…” I can’t think of the word.
“Loose?” she adds with a smirk.
I laugh, and figure that’s the best reply I can give.
“I’m comfortable with my sexuality,” she says, and she looks almost shy as she says it. “That makes some people uncomfortable.”
I’m not comfortable discussing this, so I sidetrack by saying, “The only thing that makes me uncomfortable about it is my low rating.”
She smiles with that annoying smile she has, the one that makes it clear that she’s going to get her way no matter what and suddenly, I feel like I’m trapped in the womens room at the mall again.
“You want to boost your rating?”
I open my mouth to answer, to tell her I was just joking, but she’s already grabbed my wrist and is pulling me over to the Reference Department. I give a helpless glance back at my laptop and my book, abandoned on the table.
After twenty uninterrupted minutes (no one uses the Reference Department anymore, not with the internet) in which I not only smacked a sharp single to first, but was also attempting to steal second, Heidi ended it with a hope-inspiring, “Not here.” And we returned to the table where my forgotten laptop and book were still waiting.
“Okay, Cassanova,” she said, smoothing out her skirt and scooting her chair close enough so that her thigh pressed against mine, “let’s see what we see.”
I nod and click.
The screen fills with lines of information. Names, addresses, dates, times, and what look like medical records – inoculations and such. I do a search for my name, but come up empty.
“John Doe’s,” Heidi says, “They won’t use our names. They’ll use aliases.”
“So you feel like we’re on this list?”
“Isn’t that what this is all about?”
“Yeah.”
“Daddy would be able help us on this.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“This file was stolen from him, remember? He doesn’t like me already, remember?”
“Okay. So what do we do with information we can’t use.”
“I don’t know.”
We sit in silence for a while, looking at information that is no more useful to us now than it was when we couldn’t access it. Then I got an idea. I click “print preview”.
“Oh… wow.”
I think it’s cool that I made her go “oh, wow.”
There, at the top or the print preview, in the header section, is a name: Richard B. Cressman.
Heidi squeezes my thigh and says, “I think someone has just earned a chance to raise his score.”
-
Wyatt Wyborn
- Member
- Posts:196
- Joined:Fri Apr 08, 2011 5:49 pm
Re: Crushed, Crushing, and Crushes
My score would have to wait. I was too excited by what I saw when I googled the name, Richard B. Cressman. Someone by that name lived in Paragon City, on Benfield Street in Skyway. I looked at the website for Hester/Peretti Pharmaceuticals (the company that made SeasoNil birth-control pills) at their “contact us” page and the list of email addresses there, but didn’t see one for rbcressman@hesterperetti.com.
“Maybe he doesn’t work for Hester/Peretti,” Heidi said.
“Or maybe Hester/Peretti is a subsidiary of a bigger corporation?” I suggested.
“Do you think the Richard B. Cressman in Skyway is the same one who created this document?”
I sighed. There was no way to tell. Even though we had a name, there was no way to know for sure it was the right guy. Not unless we –
“Want to do something illegal?”
What? What did she mean by that?
“What do you mean by that,” I asked.
“I mean, break into his house and scare the hell out of him.”
“What?” I wasn’t following.
“Imagine if you will,” she began, then took a breath and smiled as she said, “that you are Richard B. Cressman, and you’re sleeping all cozy in your nice safe bed – maybe with your wife or your girlfriend, or even your boyfriend – and all of a sudden, you’re awakened by two figures in black – totally black, head-to-toe – and they say, ‘Greetings, Mr. Cressman, we are the results of Project 8 and if you want to live, you will tell us all you know.'”
“Couldn’t we just… I don’t know… knock on his door and ask him what he knows?”
“No way! Look at this. Birth-control pills, anonymous records, mutant kids… Do you think anybody in his right mind would confess to having anything to do with that?”
And thinking about it, I realized she was probably right.
“No,” she continued, “So we’ve got to strongarm him. We’ve got to threaten him – anonymously, and with empty threats, or course. Then we’ll find out what he knows.”
We made plans. Heidi would get us some of those black, head-to-toe uniforms that Crey security sometimes uses. She would get some weapons for herself also, since she wouldn’t have powers unless she stole mine. We went to the address before dusk wearing our street clothes to make sure we’d have the right place later. We went over our lines, what we were going to say. We went over our routine, how we were going to move, who would do what. We made out for a half-hour on her bed, but she stopped me and said, “We’re like athletes before the big game – we need to save this energy for our mission.”
Heidi and I had made a date for Westbrook’s Karaoke night, but she begged out because there was a lot of preparation to be made on her end. She told me to go ahead, that it would look suspicious if I didn’t show, and I didn’t want anyone watching me when I snuck off campus way after midnight. So I went to Karaoke night without her, and wound up having a good time. Mostly. Don’t ask.
I look down at the townhouse Richard B. Cressman calls home and I feel like backing out. I mean, what if he has kids? Or even a dog that could get hurt in our little raid? I’m not sure I can handle it if I see a kid or a dog.
“Not getting cold feet, are you?” Heidi asks as if she’s reading my mind.
“No.” I lie.
“Good. Come on.”
I lift her in my arms, like a groom carrying a bride across the threshold and jump down to the roof of Cressman’s building landing softly enough so that we don’t wake anyone (I hope). The belts of our uniforms are equipped with a high-strength monofilament cord which we attach to the chimney and use to scale down the north side of the townhouse.
There aren’t that many good views in Skyway. Most windows look out onto the elevated highway or onto a row of warehouses, or some other not-so-pretty view. People who live in townhouses wouldn’t put their master bedroom on a side with an ugly view or a side that faces an alley. The north side of this building had a nice view of a park, and so we figured that Mr. Cressman’s bedroom would be located on that side.
There are two columns of four windows on the north side; Heidi takes one and I take the other. Heidi finds the master bedroom on her side through the second window from the top. She motions me over and I push off against the bricks which sends me in a wide arc over to where Heidi is peering through the glass.
I look also and see an old guy sleeping alone in a king-sized bed. His back is to us, a balding head of red and grey hair resting on a pillow. There’s a huge hump under the sheets that rises just below the head, swells to the middle, then tapers down to where two feet are sticking out from under the sheet.
“Think it’s him?”
I nod and hope I’m right.
“Okay,” she says, “Here goes nothing.”
From one of the many compartments on her utility belt (seriously, the belts that came with these outfits are amazing and I hope I get to keep mine) Heidi takes a small aerosol spray can and sprays the window. We hold our breath and count to thirty and then watch the windowpane dissolve. Crey has some amazing stuff.
We’re in and standing at the foot of his bed and I’m about to deliver the opening line (“Wake up. Keep quiet. Speak only when we give you permission to.”) But Heidi says something completely different from anything we had prepared:
“Okay scumbag – we want answers NOW!”
We’d agreed on code names so I said, “Vandal One, what the heck are you doing?”
She turned and looked at me. I wish I could have seen her eyes, but they were hidden by the same kind of multi-spectrum goggles I was wearing.
“I’m improvising Vandal Two.”
Cressman was definitely awake now, sitting up and trying to climb the headboard of his bed. I guess waking up from a sound sleep to a stranger with a big gun calling you scumbag will do that. The targeting laser from Heidi’s gun was centered on his forehead.
“Let’s stick to the plan,” I tell her. I’m not comfortable with how this is going.
Before I can utter my line, Cressman says, “Don’t kill me. Just don’t kill me.”
Maybe this will work out after all.
“What do you want to know?” His voice is quivering and his breath is coming in gasps.
“Project Eight,” Heidi says, “I want to know all about it.”
“I-I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He’s lying. Even I can tell that.
“Tell me or I’ll start with your knees and move up from there…”
The laser dot is on his knee.
“Okay – okay… just… don’t kill me.”
His pleas are met with silence and the laser dot doesn’t move.
“I really don’t know anything about it.” His voice is still quivering and beads of sweat are popping out on his face. “They brought me records and I input the data. For lots of projects. Project 8 was one of them. I think. But that was a long time ago”
“Who’s ‘they’?” I ask.
“Systru – I used to work for Systru.”
“Spell it,” I say, and he does.
Heidi practically growls out, “What else? What else do you know?”
“N-nothing!”
“Liar!” Heidi says, her voice growing tenser. “You know more! I know you know more!”
We had a plan and she’s not sticking to it. She’s all full of anger and rage. This is not what we said we’d do it’s –
It’s not about Project 8 or finding out the truth about the file. Heidi’s mom died having her. We’re both pretty sure our mutations came from Project 8. She’s blaming this guy for her mom’s death. Heidi doesn’t want truth – she wants revenge! We’re going to follow this trail of clues and she’s going to leave a trail of bodies behind!
I see her finger flex on the trigger and I grab her gun and squeeze the barrel flat before yanking it out of her hands. My own speed surprises me and I realize that it’s because of the adrenaline rush I’m feeling.
“Why did you do that!?” she screams at me.
“You’re not going to kill him,” I tell her.
“You’re not going to stop me,” she says.
I feel it then. My strength leaves me. The gun in my hand is suddenly heavy.
Heidi’s fist comes toward my face and I lift the rifle in time for her blow to shatter it, taking most of the force of the blow. I still wind up slamming against the wall and leaving an imprint in the plaster.
She comes at me again but this time there’s nothing between us to stop her from hitting me full-on.
“Stop!” I say. “Stop! This is me! It’s… me!”
She stops. She’s still wound up like a steel coil, but she stops.
“You can’t kill him. You’re not a murderer. That’s not you.”
“You don’t know me.”
“Yes, I do.”
“No. You don’t.”
She turns away, moves toward the window, and just before she leaps from it toward the sky she says, “I don’t want to see you anymore. I don’t want to hear from you. Nothing. When I find out about Systru I’ll send you the info. But I don’t want to see you again.”
And just like that she’s gone.
There’s a loud bang right behind me and at the same time something knocks me down.
It’s been so long since I’ve felt pain that at first my brain doesn’t register it. When it does –
The world goes white.
I can’t lay here. Have to get up. Get out. I blink until my sight returns and try to stand, but it’s like my left leg is no longer connected to my hip. I reach for my mediport patch, but it’s on my patrol outfit, the one I stuffed in the trash the day Mia and I argued…
A veil of grey comes over my eyes. I feel wet like I’m sitting in warm water – warm, sticky water. I hear a shshhshsh and I realize that it’s the sound I’m making as I drag myself toward the window and hoped-for escape.
Another bang and I’m falling… falling…
The thud of my landing stuns me back to awareness and the smell of diesel exhaust chokes my lungs.
Finally, some luck. I landed on top of a tractor-trailer.
I ride until I feel my powers returning. The pain between my waist and my hip returns and I realize that the bullet shattered my pelvis. I’m glad the second shot missed.
“Maybe he doesn’t work for Hester/Peretti,” Heidi said.
“Or maybe Hester/Peretti is a subsidiary of a bigger corporation?” I suggested.
“Do you think the Richard B. Cressman in Skyway is the same one who created this document?”
I sighed. There was no way to tell. Even though we had a name, there was no way to know for sure it was the right guy. Not unless we –
“Want to do something illegal?”
What? What did she mean by that?
“What do you mean by that,” I asked.
“I mean, break into his house and scare the hell out of him.”
“What?” I wasn’t following.
“Imagine if you will,” she began, then took a breath and smiled as she said, “that you are Richard B. Cressman, and you’re sleeping all cozy in your nice safe bed – maybe with your wife or your girlfriend, or even your boyfriend – and all of a sudden, you’re awakened by two figures in black – totally black, head-to-toe – and they say, ‘Greetings, Mr. Cressman, we are the results of Project 8 and if you want to live, you will tell us all you know.'”
“Couldn’t we just… I don’t know… knock on his door and ask him what he knows?”
“No way! Look at this. Birth-control pills, anonymous records, mutant kids… Do you think anybody in his right mind would confess to having anything to do with that?”
And thinking about it, I realized she was probably right.
“No,” she continued, “So we’ve got to strongarm him. We’ve got to threaten him – anonymously, and with empty threats, or course. Then we’ll find out what he knows.”
We made plans. Heidi would get us some of those black, head-to-toe uniforms that Crey security sometimes uses. She would get some weapons for herself also, since she wouldn’t have powers unless she stole mine. We went to the address before dusk wearing our street clothes to make sure we’d have the right place later. We went over our lines, what we were going to say. We went over our routine, how we were going to move, who would do what. We made out for a half-hour on her bed, but she stopped me and said, “We’re like athletes before the big game – we need to save this energy for our mission.”
Heidi and I had made a date for Westbrook’s Karaoke night, but she begged out because there was a lot of preparation to be made on her end. She told me to go ahead, that it would look suspicious if I didn’t show, and I didn’t want anyone watching me when I snuck off campus way after midnight. So I went to Karaoke night without her, and wound up having a good time. Mostly. Don’t ask.
I look down at the townhouse Richard B. Cressman calls home and I feel like backing out. I mean, what if he has kids? Or even a dog that could get hurt in our little raid? I’m not sure I can handle it if I see a kid or a dog.
“Not getting cold feet, are you?” Heidi asks as if she’s reading my mind.
“No.” I lie.
“Good. Come on.”
I lift her in my arms, like a groom carrying a bride across the threshold and jump down to the roof of Cressman’s building landing softly enough so that we don’t wake anyone (I hope). The belts of our uniforms are equipped with a high-strength monofilament cord which we attach to the chimney and use to scale down the north side of the townhouse.
There aren’t that many good views in Skyway. Most windows look out onto the elevated highway or onto a row of warehouses, or some other not-so-pretty view. People who live in townhouses wouldn’t put their master bedroom on a side with an ugly view or a side that faces an alley. The north side of this building had a nice view of a park, and so we figured that Mr. Cressman’s bedroom would be located on that side.
There are two columns of four windows on the north side; Heidi takes one and I take the other. Heidi finds the master bedroom on her side through the second window from the top. She motions me over and I push off against the bricks which sends me in a wide arc over to where Heidi is peering through the glass.
I look also and see an old guy sleeping alone in a king-sized bed. His back is to us, a balding head of red and grey hair resting on a pillow. There’s a huge hump under the sheets that rises just below the head, swells to the middle, then tapers down to where two feet are sticking out from under the sheet.
“Think it’s him?”
I nod and hope I’m right.
“Okay,” she says, “Here goes nothing.”
From one of the many compartments on her utility belt (seriously, the belts that came with these outfits are amazing and I hope I get to keep mine) Heidi takes a small aerosol spray can and sprays the window. We hold our breath and count to thirty and then watch the windowpane dissolve. Crey has some amazing stuff.
We’re in and standing at the foot of his bed and I’m about to deliver the opening line (“Wake up. Keep quiet. Speak only when we give you permission to.”) But Heidi says something completely different from anything we had prepared:
“Okay scumbag – we want answers NOW!”
We’d agreed on code names so I said, “Vandal One, what the heck are you doing?”
She turned and looked at me. I wish I could have seen her eyes, but they were hidden by the same kind of multi-spectrum goggles I was wearing.
“I’m improvising Vandal Two.”
Cressman was definitely awake now, sitting up and trying to climb the headboard of his bed. I guess waking up from a sound sleep to a stranger with a big gun calling you scumbag will do that. The targeting laser from Heidi’s gun was centered on his forehead.
“Let’s stick to the plan,” I tell her. I’m not comfortable with how this is going.
Before I can utter my line, Cressman says, “Don’t kill me. Just don’t kill me.”
Maybe this will work out after all.
“What do you want to know?” His voice is quivering and his breath is coming in gasps.
“Project Eight,” Heidi says, “I want to know all about it.”
“I-I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He’s lying. Even I can tell that.
“Tell me or I’ll start with your knees and move up from there…”
The laser dot is on his knee.
“Okay – okay… just… don’t kill me.”
His pleas are met with silence and the laser dot doesn’t move.
“I really don’t know anything about it.” His voice is still quivering and beads of sweat are popping out on his face. “They brought me records and I input the data. For lots of projects. Project 8 was one of them. I think. But that was a long time ago”
“Who’s ‘they’?” I ask.
“Systru – I used to work for Systru.”
“Spell it,” I say, and he does.
Heidi practically growls out, “What else? What else do you know?”
“N-nothing!”
“Liar!” Heidi says, her voice growing tenser. “You know more! I know you know more!”
We had a plan and she’s not sticking to it. She’s all full of anger and rage. This is not what we said we’d do it’s –
It’s not about Project 8 or finding out the truth about the file. Heidi’s mom died having her. We’re both pretty sure our mutations came from Project 8. She’s blaming this guy for her mom’s death. Heidi doesn’t want truth – she wants revenge! We’re going to follow this trail of clues and she’s going to leave a trail of bodies behind!
I see her finger flex on the trigger and I grab her gun and squeeze the barrel flat before yanking it out of her hands. My own speed surprises me and I realize that it’s because of the adrenaline rush I’m feeling.
“Why did you do that!?” she screams at me.
“You’re not going to kill him,” I tell her.
“You’re not going to stop me,” she says.
I feel it then. My strength leaves me. The gun in my hand is suddenly heavy.
Heidi’s fist comes toward my face and I lift the rifle in time for her blow to shatter it, taking most of the force of the blow. I still wind up slamming against the wall and leaving an imprint in the plaster.
She comes at me again but this time there’s nothing between us to stop her from hitting me full-on.
“Stop!” I say. “Stop! This is me! It’s… me!”
She stops. She’s still wound up like a steel coil, but she stops.
“You can’t kill him. You’re not a murderer. That’s not you.”
“You don’t know me.”
“Yes, I do.”
“No. You don’t.”
She turns away, moves toward the window, and just before she leaps from it toward the sky she says, “I don’t want to see you anymore. I don’t want to hear from you. Nothing. When I find out about Systru I’ll send you the info. But I don’t want to see you again.”
And just like that she’s gone.
There’s a loud bang right behind me and at the same time something knocks me down.
It’s been so long since I’ve felt pain that at first my brain doesn’t register it. When it does –
The world goes white.
I can’t lay here. Have to get up. Get out. I blink until my sight returns and try to stand, but it’s like my left leg is no longer connected to my hip. I reach for my mediport patch, but it’s on my patrol outfit, the one I stuffed in the trash the day Mia and I argued…
A veil of grey comes over my eyes. I feel wet like I’m sitting in warm water – warm, sticky water. I hear a shshhshsh and I realize that it’s the sound I’m making as I drag myself toward the window and hoped-for escape.
Another bang and I’m falling… falling…
The thud of my landing stuns me back to awareness and the smell of diesel exhaust chokes my lungs.
Finally, some luck. I landed on top of a tractor-trailer.
I ride until I feel my powers returning. The pain between my waist and my hip returns and I realize that the bullet shattered my pelvis. I’m glad the second shot missed.
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