Artists, writers, musicians—photographers—they all had to be able to tap into something (the other side) that wasn’t there, some other better world, and grab hold of things, and bring them back so the rest of the world can feel the magic too. Diane Arbus did it, at great personal cost. The world was better for having her photographs in it, even if that struggle ended up killing her.
With a shiver, I realized: It takes a very special kind of crazy to change the world.
Solomon was already in the car. When I got in, I didn’t ask him if he’d seen the blue fairy, or relay my conversation with the girl.
I looked at my list. So many dumb, gullible boys, so many petty, little crimes. Those football players weren’t blameless, but Sheffield was the twisted brain behind it all.
Sheffield was the one I needed to focus on.
But by then it was late. And my head was spinning. And we were hungry. So we headed for my house.
“Shit,” Solomon said. Because both my parents were sitting on the porch.
That afternoon, I’d told him that I’d told them. Seeing them, seeing how he stiffened in his seat, I grabbed his hand and held it tight. “Do you want to go?”
They stood up, came toward the car.
“No,” he said, but he sounded like a man going to the guillotine.
Before he’d taken a step outside of the car, my mother had him in a hug. My father put a hand on his shoulder.
“We are so, so sorry for what happened,” he said. “And I am so sorry for how I’ve treated you.”
In the kitchen, over coffee, once most of the crying was over, my father said, “I want to call a meeting, of the school board. We spoke with a lawyer—strictly confidential, and without giving your name, Solomon—and she thinks that could be a good place to start. At the very least, that man should not be allowed to continue to coach or teach anyone. But before I move forward, I want to make sure: Are you okay with this? We want to be really careful not to do anything that might hurt or further traumatize you.”
Solomon stared into his coffee cup. “Let me think about it?” he said, but I could hear the doubt in his voice. And the fear—the power Mr. Barrett still had over him. And my coffee turned to toxic sludge in my stomach.
I texted Sheffield: Can I come over?
Almost immediately, he wrote back: My mom’s got people over. And then: Meet up at the old movie theater? I sent an OK.
Solomon and I looked out the window. A massive stingray flew high overhead, flapping her wings leisurely. A pair of storm giants lumbered past. Children ran by in monster masks. We watched them go. I wished I was one of them.
Sixty-Two
Solomon
“Here,” Ash said.
The abandoned Darkside Cinema Palace really did blend in with its surroundings. The whole block had been painted blue. In that run-down district, a line of buildings with boarded-up windows and “Destroy All Monsters” graffiti was barely noticeable.
“You’re sure,” I said.
“Of course not.”
In the distance we could see the bridge, lit up so bright it felt like a brand-new constellation. Twilight was bleeding into evening. Snowflakes began to patter down around us. I tied Maraud to a paddock a couple blocks away, and took a deep, deep breath. Ash and I walked forward hand in hand.
Children ran past us in giant papier-mâché masks: megalosaurs, gorillas, fish men. Unmasking Day street vendors sold them in plain white, and then you bought the paints so you could decorate them yourself.
A woman at a pushcart was steaming dumplings to sell; the air was rich with the doughy warm meat smell of them.
The building was busy, for being so obviously out of service. The wide front doors were propped open. People came and went. Posters out front promised “The Truth Will Be Revealed.” Journalists stood on the steps and scribbled.
Ultramarine armbands were everywhere.
“Welcome,” someone said to us, as we approached. She handed us each a flyer. “The Revelation is upon us. Thank you for being with us for this historic event.”
I nodded. Ash sank deeper into her hood. We got through the front door, no problem, but I knew our luck would not last much longer. Security would be tighter, the closer we got to the Shield.
“Announcement is in less than an hour,” someone said.
“What are we going to do?” I asked Ash. I’d tried to ask her a couple times, on the way over. I didn’t think she was ignoring me. I think she was just as out of ideas as I was.
“This way to the assembly hall,” someone else said, and we followed the slow-moving crowd.
“We need to look around,” Ash said. “See if we can find where they’re keeping them.”
“This is ridiculous,” I said. “We have no weapons, and two magical abilities of extremely limited usefulness in a combat situation.”
“Don’t forget about my one move,” she said, grabbing me by the wrist and elbow.
I rolled my eyes.
“The weird weather’s getting weirder out there,” Ms. Jackson said, on the radio in my pocket, and the sound of her voice was comforting. “Snow reported in some places. Thunder and lightning coming in from the west. Storm giants seen all over Darkside. Dress warm, everyone heading to Unmasking Day. Rely on body heat if you need to. Hold tight to one another. It’s going to be a bumpy night.”
Sixty-Three
Ash
“Snow reported in some places,” Ms. Jackson said, from my car’s speakers. “Thunder and lightning coming in from the west. Dress warm, everyone out trick-or-treating, or heading to the Halloween dance in Hudson tonight.”
We still had an hour before I was supposed to meet with Sheffield. And two hours before his team was set to burn the whole town down.
Every time I slowed for a stop sign, I snuck a peek at Solomon. He seemed . . . fine. Normal. Sane. But there were always times between episodes when everything was fine. And times when he seemed fine, but was completely losing it on the inside.
I should have been planning. Figuring out what to say to Sheffield. I had no photograph to lay in front of him. He himself hadn’t done anything wrong. Not yet. His portrait wouldn’t help me, when I got there. I could only use my words, and I didn’t know what they would be.
So, yeah. I should have been scheming. But Solomon was beside me, wide-eyed and smiling, in a rare moment when he could maybe receive it if I said something he didn’t want to hear.
And maybe it made me a bad person, but I realized—I would let Sheffield burn down everything I knew, if it meant saving Solomon.
“Hey,” I said, faking nonchalance poorly. “Did I ever tell you I was on medication?”
“No,” he said, and frowned. “For what?”
“For depression.”
“Oh,” he said. “I didn’t realize it was so bad.” He paused. “What kind of friend am I?”
“The best kind,” I said. “It’s just that I never want to talk about stuff like this with you.”
“Why? Because I’m so much crazier than you?”
I didn’t know how to answer.
He smiled. “Has it helped? The medicine?”
“A lot,” I said. “I’m not cured. But I want to get out of bed in the morning. I feel like I can do things.”
“Are you going to tell me I should take medication?”
I sighed. “I don’t know, Solomon. Everybody’s different. But I think you need help, one way or another.”
He frowned into his hands in his lap.
I said, “I used to think it would . . . change me. Break me. Turn me into someone else. A zombie, or something. But it’s mostly just made me a lot less miserable. Just . . . think about it, okay?”
He grinned. “Is that an order, Princess?”
“Yes, my loyal subject.”
“You know you saved my ass,” he said. “By telling Child Protective Services where I was.”
“How so?”
“They would have turned my case over to the cop
s by the end of that day, if they hadn’t gotten information on my whereabouts. As far as the cops could tell, I didn’t have an open CPS case when they arrested me. Otherwise they wouldn’t have let me go so easily.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I called them,” Solomon said. “Spoke with a case worker.”
“Are you serious? That’s amazing!”
He shrugged, then nodded.
“Are you going to go in and talk to them?”
“Maybe,” he said.
My phone rang. Somehow we’d ended up under the Rip Van Winkle Bridge. I pulled over to answer it.
“Ash,” Connor said, and his voice had a hitch in it.
“Hey!” I said. “Everything okay?”
“No,” he said. “Absolutely nothing is okay. I need your help. Can you come over to my house?”
I looked at Solomon. Watched the happy leak out of his face. My mouth would not make words.
“I’m getting my stuff,” Connor said. “I bought a train ticket to Poughkeepsie, to stay with my aunt. But I don’t want to go back to my house alone. I’m sorry. I really need your help, Ash.”
“Of course,” I said. “I’m on my way.”
Overhead, the bridge was lit up so bright it felt like a brand-new constellation. Snowflakes began to patter down around us. I put the car in drive, and took a deep, deep breath.
Sixty-Four
Solomon
We made a circuit of the theater, and found that security was far too tight for anything we might have tried. No dozing guard at the door to the backstage; no unattended uniforms we could suit up into and pretend we were a couple of the bad guys.
“I can try to destabilize them,” I said, when we reached the last possible access point that could have gotten us behind the scenes—and found five armed men and women standing in front of it. “You could show me something horrific, and then when they’re incapacitated by the emotions I project, we can rush in.”
“Too risky. We have no idea if it will work,” Ash said.
And still, somewhere behind one of those doors, up or down a staircase, Niv and Connor were being held.
“The only way out is through,” Ash said, and headed into the theater, so swiftly all I could do was follow.
The seats had been removed. People were packed together—thousands of them, easily. At the front, before a massive movie screen, a bonfire blazed. A smaller version of the Great Fire that would be burning across town, at Darkside Park, at the official Unmasking Day celebration, with half of the city in attendance.
Bright light lit up the back of the screen: a loading bay door that opened onto the alley behind the theater. A good potential escape route . . . except getting to it would involve fighting through a crowd full of people who hated us.
A priest appeared beside the bonfire, and blew through a parasaurolophus crest, signaling the start of the Unmasking Day ritual. A cheer went through the crowd.
We threaded our way through the press of people. A wandering holy man in burgundy robes, with chalk and ash and pigment streaked across his face, handed us each a mask, and waved incense smoke at us, and talked us through the familiar prayers for filling the mask with the parts of our selves we did not love. Bad memories, bad attitudes, weaknesses and sins and anger. It all went into the mask, which would be thrown into the flames at the end of the ceremony and destroyed.
That was the theory, anyway. I didn’t imagine my own bad parts would be so easily burned away.
Ash and I put on our masks. Children ran past us, little make-believe monsters.
“We pray,” said the holy man, and he led us in the Song of Burning.
And then the Shield appeared, and the crowd went wild. A sweet-faced old woman standing beside me had tears in her eyes, she was so happy. Nausea overtook me.
“Citizens of Darkside!” the Shield called. “Today is the day when we finally reveal the truth. The day we all take off our masks.”
Sixty-Five
Ash
Connor’s street was full of children in masks. Little make-believe monsters. There’s a real monster on this street, I wanted to shout.
But that wouldn’t stop him. I had to trust that my mom and dad would be able to do something about Mr. Barrett. Stop him somehow. I had to hope.
I parked the car down the block, where Connor was waiting for us. Solomon waved to his stepbrother, through the windshield.
“I’m sorry,” he said, when I unbuckled my seat belt. “I just can’t.”
“Don’t be sorry,” I said. “Every great escape needs a getaway driver.”
“But I can’t drive.”
“Well, then, every great escape needs somebody to sit in the car and wait.”
“You’re stupid,” Solomon said, grinning. “Just call me if things get scary, okay? I’ll kick down the door if I have to. Punch his face off.”
I didn’t doubt that Solomon could do so. He was taller and stronger than Mr. Barrett. But in Solomon’s mind the man would forever be the biggest, most frightening monster in a world that was full of them.
“Hey,” Connor said, when I got out. And then he hugged me so hard I wanted to cry for him.
“Is he . . . ?”
“His car is in the driveway. Could be out for his afternoon run . . . could be taking a nap. So . . . we’ll need to be superquiet just in case, I guess.”
I took his hand, and we started walking. There were still forty-five minutes, before I was supposed to meet up with Sheffield. Provided we got in and out without incident or confrontation, that wouldn’t be a problem.
Connor said, “I feel dumb, asking for your help.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“It’s not that I think he’d hurt me. Although I guess I really have no idea what he is and isn’t capable of, if I never . . .”
I didn’t answer. Connor didn’t need my advice, my wisdom. All he needed was someone to listen.
“I’m just afraid if I see him, I’ll—I don’t know, lose it.”
“I get that,” I said.
I could see the treehouse looming in the backyard. Early twilight; it held nothing but darkness inside.
We slipped into the house silently, and made our way upstairs. Connor went to work, sloppily stuffing shirts and pants into a duffel bag.
I stood in the hallway. Watched Mr. Barrett’s bedroom door. Prayed it wouldn’t open.
And then, it did.
And there he was. Struggling into his fancy clothes, for the Halloween dance. Bleary-eyed, like maybe he hadn’t slept so well, but otherwise the same. Strong, broad, scary shoulders. Muscled arms. He could hurt us, if he wanted to.
“Ash,” he said, and a shiver went through me. And nausea. And rage.
You broke him.
“What’s the matter?” he said. “Why are you standing in the dark?”
The next breath would not come.
“Hey,” he said, and reached out his hand, and touched my forearm—
And he wasn’t trying to hurt me—he had no reason to, he had no idea how much I hated him—and my brain knew that, but my body—
Reacted. Tapped into something (the other side), some skill from somewhere else entirely (the other Ash), and my arms moved fast as lightning, grabbing his wrist with one hand and his elbow with the other and twisting, bending his arm a way it should never go, bringing this big strong man to his knees with a yelp of pain and surprise.
“Hell of a move,” he grunt-laughed.
“Don’t fucking talk to me,” I said. Whispering; praying Connor did not come out of his room.
Now he wince-laughed. “What happened, Ash?”
I didn’t mean to say anything. I knew the smart thing was to get the hell out of there without risking a confrontation. Let the wheels of justice handle Mr. Barrett.
But part of me didn’t trust those wheels. And even if anything came of my parents’ attempts to hold him accountable, it would arrive in the form of legal papers, a phone call. Somet
hing that would give him plenty of time to put on a brave face, lie his way through it.
I wanted to see the fear flicker in his eyes.
“I know,” I hissed. “What you did to Solomon.”
“Solomon has a serious mental illness,” he said, shaking his head in false sadness. “And you’re not helping him if you indulge these persecution fantasies—”
“I saw you,” I said. “The day I fell from your treehouse. I saw you sexually assault him.”
His face went blank for just a fraction of a second. His eyes twitched. If any fear flickered there, it was only for a split second. And then—he laughed.
“And you’ve known all this time? Or, let me guess, you’ve suddenly regained your memories?” He laughed again, and I stopped myself from twisting his wrist and elbow and breaking his arm. “I don’t doubt that you believe what you’re saying. You’re worried about your friend, and your brain has manufactured a narrative that—”
“It’s not manufactured,” I said. “And there will be a reckoning.”
More laughter; more barely stifled urge to shatter his bones. “Oh, my dear. You have been watching too many movies. Nobody who knows me would ever believe whatever story you’ve concocted,” he said. “And everyone in this town knows me.”
I opened my mouth, but no words came. Nausea closed up my throat. I’d been an idiot, to believe I could break him with a weapon as flimsy as the truth. He had confidence, arrogance, a mighty armor made of toxic masculinity.
I felt sick; I felt helpless. I’d imagined I could destroy him, but I’d misjudged where his power came from. How deep his sickness ran.
He let me stand there, sputtering for something to say. Enjoying the sight of how angry I was, how impotent.
And then, a door creaked open, behind me.
“Hey, Dad,” Connor said.
Mr. Barrett’s jaw dropped. This time, I saw the fear in his eyes. Real fear: raw and thick. I could smell it. The scent of guilt, of shame.
“You told him that we know,” Connor said to me.
Mr. Barrett took a step forward. “Connor, you understand this is nonsense,” he said, but I could hear his confidence deflating fast.
Destroy All Monsters Page 21
