Movies make a lot about the hero setting off alone to vanquish the monster. But those are movies. In real life, I needed all the help I could get.
Fifty-Eight
Solomon
The sun was hidden behind the clouds. The sky was getting darker and darker even though sunset was a long way away. Out of nowhere we were looking at a thunder and lightning storm, and maybe even snow, if the temperature kept dropping.
“Nothing,” Ash said, stepping out of the phone booth. “Couldn’t reach anyone I trust.”
She couldn’t very well call and say, I’m the princess, I need to talk to my mom, not if the Palace was as full of spies as Niv had said. If they were cops, they might be able to trace the call.
“The place is on such high alert that even my asking for someone specific got them all suspicious.”
“You sure you know where the Shield’s holed up?” I asked.
Ash nodded.
“Should we start to head that way?”
She frowned. Doing so was almost certainly suicide, but if we had other options, I didn’t know what they were.
“Wait,” she said. “I want to try to reach my mother one more time. Not in person or on the telephone—with my ability. But for it to work, we need to get as close to the Palace as we can.”
Maraud carried us through the busy late-afternoon streets. Posters with our faces on them had been put up in bus shelters and store windows. Ash wrapped a scarf around her face, and I had acquired a ridiculous hat from one of Radha’s neighbors.
On every street corner, people argued. We caught snatches of conversation as we ran. Tensions were so much higher. Everyone seemed to be on edge. Afraid, and angry. Arguments started easily, over the smallest things. People said horrible things about the Crown and the Palace that they’d never have dared to say before.
But this was still our city. We could still smell roasting chestnuts, and garlicky noodles, and mammoth-milk ice cream. Stalls sold Unmasking Day tools and supplies, for a city full of people building masks for themselves. The city belonged to the good people who just wanted to live their lives, not the wicked ones who wanted to divide us.
Two blocks from the Palace, Ash tugged at my sleeve. We stopped, and she whispered in my ear. “Go get us something to eat, okay? I want to be alone for this.”
I climbed off Maraud, and went into a nearby bakery. Pretended to browse through breads and cookies, when what I was really doing was watching Ash. How her face darkened. How her lips moved, ever so slightly, like she was whispering in the ear of the queen.
And then I had to wait, until she was done crying.
“I don’t think it worked,” she said, when I came back out. “I don’t even know if she could hear me. Or if she heard me, and was trying really hard not to.”
I handed her a cinnamon roll, and climbed back onto Maraud.
Ash turned around to watch the Palace as we left it behind. Shimmering gray stone. The home she had never felt completely at home in, but loved all the same. I switched the little radio on, eager for some news, some distraction, but Ash turned it right back off.
Fifty-Nine
Ash
Solomon turned the car radio on, but I switched it right back off.
I looked up at my house. Pristine gray paint. The home I had never felt completely at home in, but loved all the same.
“What do you want to do?” I asked Solomon. “Wait out here? Down in the basement?”
He looked off into the distance, and I was afraid he’d want to leave. Go off on another one of his weird, wild journeys. The time we’d spent together was making me feel strong, stable . . . and I hoped it wasn’t just pride that made me think it was helping him too.
“I’ll take a nap in the back,” he said, opening his door. “I’m so tired.”
I hadn’t told him, that I meant to tell my parents. Half of me thought maybe he wouldn’t want me to. Wanted to keep this secret. Because telling my parents meant something might happen. And maybe that would get Mr. Barrett punished, but it also might make headlines, become gossip, cause a backlash . . . make Solomon’s life even more hellish than it already was.
But staying silent couldn’t be the right call. Could it?
“That sounds great,” I said, watching him curl up across both back seats. “I love you, Solomon.”
“I love you too,” he said.
I headed inside. “Hey, honey,” my mother said, when I got to the kitchen. Dad was there too, and I said a prayer of thanks that I’d only have to have this conversation once.
“Hey,” I said. “I need to talk to you two.”
I looked at my hands while I tried to figure out how to do this. Where to start. What to ask. They were ruined, my hands. All those photo chemicals. They looked like they belonged to an eighty-year-old. I’d need to moisturize, soon, and often.
“I saw something terrible,” I said, without really putting any thought into how to say it. “I saw Mr. Barrett molesting Solomon.”
“What?” my mother yelped.
My father spoke too. “Ashley, what are you—”
“It was up in the treehouse,” I blurted. “When we were twelve. The day I fell out of the tree.”
“No,” my mother whispered, but it wasn’t the no of “I don’t believe you.” It was the no of “Please, God, no.”
They stared into each other’s eyes. Grasped each other’s hands. Their faces searching.
I knew they were trying to make sense of a world that seemed to crack open. A world they didn’t recognize.
“Ash,” my father said, but it wasn’t the Ash of “Come on, Ash, don’t be ridiculous.” It was the Ash of “Oh my god.”
“Fuck,” my father said, and clamped both his hands over his mouth. “Fuck.” Stumbled backward, leaned against the wall.
I felt the tears threaten to spill over my cheeks. “I’m sorry, Daddy. I—”
My father shook his head. Held up his hand to silence my apology.
“All these years,” he said, his voice so low it was hard to hear. “George, he—he always said that Solomon was crazy. Said he had persecution fantasies—told me that, over and over. Said he tried to hurt Connor. Implied that he had something to do with your falling out of the tree. And I believed him. I treated Solomon like a criminal.”
I remembered what Mr. Barrett had said to me, about Solomon’s mother coming from an Orthodox Jewish background. The casual, quiet anti-Semitism of it, implying: You know how those people are. How many times had he repeated that line, to the people around town? How many people had he convinced she was crazy?
“Abusers they—they discredit their victims,” Mom said, her voice barely bigger than a whisper. “Make everyone think they’re liars or—or crazy. So if they ever do ask for help, they . . .”
They won’t get any. My mother couldn’t finish.
And then my father started to cry.
I hadn’t expected this from him. I’d expected denial, him trying to tell me how his Good, Good Buddy Mr. Barrett wasn’t capable of anything so awful.
My mother took me by the arm, pulled me into a hug. Eventually my father joined in.
An hour later I returned to the car, with two mugs full of black coffee.
“Hey,” Solomon said. He was lying there, eyes open, looking past the ceiling. Holding his guitar, picking out haphazard strings of notes.
“Hey,” I said, handing him back his coffee. “Did you nap?”
“Yeah,” he said. “It was nice. You’ve been crying.”
“Yeah,” I said, and left a little silence, in case he wanted to talk about it, but he just kept strumming. I felt weird, light-headed. Powerful.
I need to do some research, my father had said. Talk to some people. See what we can do about this.
I’ll call Jocelyn, Mom had said. She’s a lawyer. I’ll give her the general info—nothing specific—and see what our options are.
Promise me, I’d said. You won’t do anything without telling Solomon
first. Making sure he’s okay with it. We can’t hurt him any worse than he’s already been hurt. And they’d promised. My parents hadn’t fixed anything, but Solomon and I weren’t in this alone. That made a difference.
“I’m going to Justin’s house now,” I said. “I’m confronting them all. The whole team, one at a time, for what they’ve done.”
“Why?” Solomon asked. “That seems totally crazy.”
I opened my mouth to answer, but realized I didn’t have one.
I thought of Mr. Barrett. Whatever he was, he hadn’t always been like that. He’d been a kid once, and full of magic like all children are. Somewhere along the line he got broken, twisted. And started hurting people.
“Because I want to believe that people have a choice,” I said, struggling not to whisper. “Whether to become monsters. I want to believe that if you give them a chance, they’ll choose not to continue hurting people.” I paused. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it is totally crazy. Do you want to come?”
“Where you go I go,” he said.
Which was lucky, because if he had said no, I might not have been able to do it on my own.
We went.
I wish I could say that I walked in there knowing exactly what to say, how to make them see the light, how to get them to do the right thing. But that’s not the way it was. I was scared, and awkward, and didn’t know what the hell to do.
Justin’s house smelled like steamed dumplings, and his mom was supernice to us and I felt really awful handing him the photo I’d developed with my eyes shut, channeling (the other side) whatever gave me the ability to see things that weren’t there, but were still real.
He stared at it for a long time, and then handed it back to me. Looked from me to Solomon and then back again. “How did you get this?”
So he could see it. So they were visible to the person who was in them.
“Never mind how,” I said.
His Induction had been pretty mild, compared to the swastikas and arson of some of his teammates. He’d put a dirty magazine into the backpack of Rory Lowell, a Jehovah’s Witness classmate of ours so strait-laced that back in first grade he had to go to the principal’s office whenever we celebrated someone’s birthday.
The photo didn’t show what happened when the magazine was discovered. If a parent found it and flipped out, or if Rory found it and recognized it for the bullying tactic that it was, if he got scared and upset. Or if he was superhappy about this forbidden fruit landing in his lap. It just showed a slightly blurry Justin sneaking it into Rory’s backpack.
“Are you going to show my mom?”
My heart broke, at that. At the sadness in his voice. He wasn’t scared of the cops or the teachers. He just didn’t want to disappoint his mom.
“I’m not going to show anyone,” I said, and did not add, because no one but you and I can see this photo. “But I want to stop the Induction Ceremonies, and I want your help.”
He nodded. He listened.
“Sheffield is the one who should go down for this,” I said. “He’s the mastermind. But he only has the power that you give him. If everybody got together, you could stop this before it gets any worse. Before people get hurt, or go to jail.”
He nodded, but slowly. He wasn’t agreeing to anything. Not yet.
Thinking about Sheffield as the mastermind, it occurred to me for the first time to wonder what Mr. Barrett’s place might be in all of this—the destruction planned by the football team he coached. If he knew about it; if he was involved.
“Thanks, Ash. For not telling my mom.”
“No problem,” I said. “Just please don’t mention this to anyone, okay? Not yet.”
“And stay tuned,” Solomon said, standing up. “We’ll call you soon, with how we’re proceeding. What we need from you.”
“Yeah,” Justin said, and stood up too, and shook our hands very awkwardly. “Sure.”
“One down, twenty-nine to go,” I said to Solomon, when we were back in the car.
“You’re amazing,” he said.
“I learned it from watching you,” I said.
In the rearview mirror, I looked at how he stared out the window. His face seemed to lose focus, and I wondered what he was seeing. From my car speakers, Ms. Jackson told us about the Hudson Police Department’s plans for an increased presence at the annual Halloween dance, in light of recent destructive acts.
Sixty
Solomon
We went back to dockside. Because we had nowhere else to go, and no idea what to do when we got there. I felt sick and scared and helpless. We knew something terrible was going to happen, and our power to do a damn thing about it felt so limited.
Ms. Jackson was droning pleasantly from the little radio, talking about the Darkside Police Department’s plans for an increased presence at the Unmasking Day celebration, and then she cut out.
Citizens of Darkside came a familiar voice—boyish, almost cheerful-sounding. But it stopped the blood in my veins, made me tug hard at Maraud’s reins, stopping her so short she snarled.
“Sorry, girl,” I said, and kissed the top of her head.
The Shield said, Please forgive this interruption. My followers have temporarily jammed the signal for several radio stations, to permit me this opportunity to speak to you directly.
All up and down the block, people were hearing him. Some looked angry. Some looked excited. Happy. Proud.
At this moment, I am addressing the Refugee Princess.
Ash flinched. She was well-disguised, but suddenly I felt like we were both exposed. Visible to anyone.
Are you listening, Princess? I think you are. I know you found me. I felt you watching. Come to me, now, alone, and I shall trade your freedom for that of your two friends. No harm has befallen them. By morning, I cannot promise this will still hold true.
“Monster,” I hissed.
People of Darkside. Tonight—finally—the truth will be revealed. The thing Queen Carmen has tried to keep hidden for so long. The proof that her time is over. I call on her to abdicate now, and set a date for free and fair elections.
Some people on our block cheered. Others looked like they were about to cry.
Do so now, or I cannot guarantee your safety and that of your beloved othersiders. Once they know the truth, there is no telling what the people of this city may do to you. And to all the monsters that live among us.
“We have to go,” Ash said, her mouth inches from my ear.
“Please,” I said. “Wait. Don’t do this. Not without—”
She told me where to find the movie theater. She did not listen to my additional attempts to talk her out of this mission, or respond to any of them.
Sixty-One
Ash
I wish I could say that I snapped my fingers and used my magic and made everything okay. Punished the guilty; brought peace and justice to the people who’d been hurt. Brought the whole sick Induction Ceremony scheme tumbling down. But that’s not what happened. There was no grand gesture. There were only a lot of little gestures.
After Justin, I called Tom, got his address, asked when would be a good time for me to come by and show him the photos.
Ravi didn’t pick up when I called, so I slid into his direct messages on Twitter and asked him the same questions.
I knew where Will lived, and I went there directly.
Some agreed. Some cried. Some told me to fuck right off. Some swore they’d do whatever they could to help.
Regardless of the ultimate outcome, I knew something now. I could see things. I could use photography to make other people see things. That was my ability. My magic.
Solomon sat in on every meeting, but he rarely spoke a word. In some cases I figured it helped, having him there. A big strong guy, in case they felt like getting angry over what I was saying to them. In others I felt like it hurt me more than it helped—set them on edge, made them scared, silent.
I wish I could say that I had this conversation thirty times,
once for each boy on the team. But lots of them never responded to my calls, or the hundred different forms of digital messages I sent their way.
Blair looked me dead in the eyes and shrugged and said, “Bros before hos.” What I saw behind those eyes gave me the shivers, and they didn’t go away for a long, long time.
Sheffield had broken him. Snapped something important. The boy he had been was gone.
That’s what Mr. Barrett almost did to Solomon, I thought, and the shivers deepened. Something broke in my best friend, but something survived too. Something stronger.
On my way out of his house, however, I saw Blair’s little sister sitting on the front lawn smashing toys together. Four, maybe five years old. She smiled at me when I came down the walk, but then she got distracted.
By a glowing blue fairy, the size of a sparrow, flying slowly through the air. The little girl laughed and reached for it, but it didn’t stop, so she yelled, and it turned and did a slow figure-eight in the air before continuing on its way. That seemed to satisfy her, and she returned her attention to the toys in front of her.
I stopped, watched it go, turned to look at the little girl and tried to keep the shock off my face. “You saw that?” I asked.
She shrugged, like, Duh.
Shivers overtook me. A cold day had just gotten a lot colder.
What if Solomon’s monsters weren’t in his head—hadn’t infected me as I followed him down the rabbit hole of his trauma? What if what I was seeing was just a different reality, no more or less valid than the one without monsters?
Children know that monsters are real. We forget, when we get older. When we decide we are grown-ups. We block out the monsters. Turn our backs on all that magic.
But maybe not everyone does. Maybe some people never leave that reality behind.
Maybe it wasn’t trauma that made Solomon see the world as full of magic and monsters. Maybe it wasn’t his sickness. Maybe that’s just who he was. Special. Gifted.
Destroy All Monsters Page 20
