Book of Names

by Slater, David Michael

  He took the sunglasses off, and Daphna looked into his grey-blue eyes. They had an intelligent cast, even if they were still darting around. But there was something unusual in them, something she recognized but couldn’t quite identify. Something sad? No, she saw exactly what it was: pain. This boy’s eyes radiated pain, and it was very much like the pain she carried around, maybe even worse.

  “I’ve just barely escaped the Sirens clutches,” he said, smiling in a way that seemed both shy and smart. “Maybe I should’ve stuffed my ears full of bubblegum and tied myself to the flagpole.”

  Daphna laughed. She loved The Odyssey.

  “Oh, they’ll skin you alive,” she said. “That’s how they have so many leather handbags.”

  The boy laughed too, a giddy sort of, well, nerdy laugh. Daphna liked it.

  “Daphna Wax,” the boy said, “I know you.” He pushed some hair out of his eye. “I mean, not from the news or anything,” he hastened to add. “I mean, I do, but not only—My name is Quinn. Quinn Quartich.”

  Daphna recognized the name. Sort of.

  “My father and your father,” Quinn explained. “They were colleagues in the book biz. He was real sorry to hear about your dad’s death.” Quinn sounded choked up. “My pop had a rare bookshop out in McMinnville,” he continued. “The last time we saw your dad he was desperate about some old Latin thing. There was some book about garbage he inquired about more recently, but he never came to get it.” His eyes started to dart again.

  “Barney Quartich!” Daphna cried. She couldn’t believe it. That Latin book! It seemed like forever ago that it had saved their lives.

  “Berny, yeah,” said Quinn. Then he started talking fast. “We just moved into Portland—which I love,” he said. “I swear it’s like Never-Never Land compared to McMinnville. We opened up a new shop out of our apartment right down the street here, what with that giant store having burned down and your dad not working the area anymore. We heard about the new store you were going to open up, in Multnomah Village, but I guess that didn’t work out, huh? It never opened, did it, even with all the stock inside? It sounds like you guys have really had a hard time. Ours is just a little place. I’ve seen you a few times over the years, with your dad. I was kind of shy though, and small, so I rarely came out of my Hobbit hole. I doubt you ever saw me.”

  Daphna blushed. Had she ever really blushed before? Not like this. It felt like her cheeks were going to melt off her face. The thought alone that this boy knew her would have been enough to throw her for a loop. How could he have been too shy to meet her? He was, well, a Pop, or he looked good enough to be one, anyway. But it seemed he’d shunned them to come talk to her. And his father sold rare books out of that new shop! Had he mentioned The Odyssey, Peter Pan and The Hobbit all in the last sixty seconds?

  “So, how ‘bout it?” Quinn said.

  “What?”

  “Partners? Locker partners?”

  “Oh, yes. Sure. Okay,” Daphna fumbled, unable to control the connection between her brain and mouth. “Yeah. Locker partners. Good. I need one. For my stuff.” She stood up, managing in the process to crash her knee into the desktop.

  “Great,” Quinn said, getting up, too. “But, ah, would you mind signing up yourself? In case they don’t allow boys and girls—”

  “Sure.”

  It was only when Daphna looked over to check the status of the line at Mr. G’s desk that she noticed everyone not in it was standing as far away as possible along the walls. They’d all been watching the show. Her ears went as hot as her cheeks.

  “I’d keep away from her if I were you,” Branwen said to Quinn after making sure Mr. Guillermo was still occupied. “Everyone who knows that girl dies. How many people you know are dead, Daphna? A dozen? Two?”

  “Shut up,” Daphna snapped. That was it. This was going too far. Branwen just couldn’t stand that a boy didn’t fall to his knees for her.

  “All those old people in the rest home,” Wren spat. “Your parents. How many parents, now?”

  “Hey, now,” Quinn said, looking slightly alarmed.

  “You don’t know what you’re getting into,” Branwen warned him. “Anything you touch her with will probably fall off.”

  Daphna was way beyond being afraid of these girls, these girls who she’d idolized for so long. But she suddenly despaired. It was true. Just about everyone she came to care about was dead.

  “Hmmm,” Quinn said, though Daphna didn’t hear him. “Let’s see about that.”

  And the next thing she knew, he was kissing her.

  Fireworks went off in Daphna’s head—the earth moved. She was somewhere else entirely.

  It took a while—forever—but cries of alarm eventually filtered through to her.

  Quinn stepped back, paling.

  It took another few moments, but eventually Daphna realized there’d been two explosions—one inside her head and one outside of it.

  The thunder had crashed again, so loudly that it sounded as if it had exploded inside the school. And the earth was still moving.

  The building was shaking right down to its foundations.

  CHAPTER 8

  not a drill

  When Daphna was out of sight, Dexter headed for the exit. Kids fell over themselves to communicate their horror at the very sight of him, which provided an amusing opportunity. He took a detour, walking up and down random halls holding his gut and coughing toward anyone he could get near. It produced the desired effect: everyone ran for their lives. When the late bell rang, he was still in the hall, but alone.

  Alrighty then, Dex thought. Time to get this retirement thing off the ground.

  The nearest door deposited him in front of the school. He needed to think. Maybe he should head to the park and hang out in the Clearing under the Ash tree awhile. Despite the horrors that happened there, he missed it.

  Lake of fire?

  The image had lodged in his head and was growing in there like a malignant tumor. It couldn’t possibly be true.

  And this Jesus stuff, he thought. First of all, since Jesus was born from a Lamed Vavnik’s rib, he obviously wasn’t who everyone thought he was. How could he come back from the dead—be resurrected, if that was the right word—and ‘rapture’ people, or whatever that word was? But there was all that stuff people said he did—miracles. Didn’t he walk on water or something? Heal people? Was there one special Lamed Vavnik? Dex had no idea what to think. It was impossible to dismiss anything anymore.

  A lake of fire?

  A waste of time even to think about it. He’d probably find out about that soon enough, anyway—his Just Deserts, like that mental pastor said.

  Dex approached the sidewalk in front of the school, but stopped at the sound of some kind of disturbance. Several women were scampering down from their porches across the street. Another came out of her house wrestling a squalling baby, a heavy-set lady wearing a bandana on her head. “What’s happening?” she called to the others.

  “An emergency at the elementary school!” shouted a blonde woman already heading down the street. “They won’t say what it’s about, so we’re going to find out!”

  Dex watched the mad dash for a moment. The elementary school was just on the other side of the athletic field.

  “Hey, you!” the woman on the porch called. Her baby would not shut up. Again with the babies!

  Dex assumed she was talking to him, so he intentionally didn’t look her way, but then she added, “Get away from my car!”

  A long-faced man in running shorts and a zip-up sweatshirt stood up from behind a car across the street.

  “Why do you need to be there so long tying your shoe!” the woman snarled. “You going to steal my car? Are you one of those people who hang around schools selling drugs? This isn’t a bus stop!”

  She caught sight of Dex, who was now watching the confrontation, and started hollering at him. “I don’t pay taxes for you to skip school! There’s all kinds of police down there,” she warned,
waving toward the other side of campus. “I’ll go get one. I’ll do it!”

  The man noticed Dex, but turned toward the woman and said, “Get back in your house, lady.”

  Dex didn’t have time for this either. The thing was, she was right. What was he going to do, skip high school? Dr. Fludd wouldn’t stand for it. Daphna wouldn’t stand for it. She’d probably take his dropping out as a sign of her failure, which meant he’d never hear the end of it. But then again, maybe it would do her good to fail at something for once in her life. Project Dex. If only he had that inheritance, school wouldn’t even matter. But of course they’d set it up so he wouldn’t get the money until he was eighteen—and probably not until he had his diploma if that was legal.

  “Go on! Git! Move along!”

  “Get back in your house, lady,” the sweatshirt guy repeated, this time with a dangerous edge to his voice.

  Anyway, Dex thought, is being considered contagious any worse than being thought stupid? Sounds better, actually. No one runs away from stupid.

  Impossibly, the baby bawled louder.

  “GET BACK IN YOUR HOUSE!”

  The believers will rise up into the sky, Dex thought, turning back toward school. He broke into a jog. Been there, done that.

  “That’s right!” the woman cried. “You punks just need to know who’s boss! Why the whole lot of—!”

  The door swung shut behind him. Dex had to be at least ten minutes late now, but, well, it was too late to do anything about that. Luckily, the numbers on the doors weren’t acting up. He quickly found the right room.

  Dex peeked through the window in the door. Only a few kids seemed to be inside, maybe half a dozen, and they were all sitting silently, staring down at their desktops. After a deep breath, he pushed his way inside and quickly took the nearest seat, which was in the front row. He’d figured maybe the teacher was yelling at everyone for what happened in the auditorium, but it was immediately obvious that such was not the case. There was no teacher. Maybe he wasn’t that late? Unsure what to do, Dex just sat there staring at the whiteboard, listening for clues behind him. There was a very uncomfortable feeling in the room. Maybe everyone thought he’d been the teacher coming, so they’d shut up?

  “So, what’s your damage?” someone asked in a slightly garbled voice. Dex turned around. It was a boy with large hearing aids and hair he must have cut himself. Dex didn’t reply at first, so the kid said, “Dumb, is it? That’s a new one. Of course I mean ‘mute,’ if you know what I mean, unless you don’t ’cause you’re dumb, by which I mean stupid.”

  “What?” Dex managed. He assumed he was being insulted, but the look on the kid’s face, while not friendly by any means, wasn’t cruel. It was mostly curious.

  “Not mute, anyway,” the kid concluded, looking perplexed. “Hmm. I’ll guess in a sec. And I’m not going with the obvious, ’cause any mouth-breather knows they don’t let kids come to school with the freakin’ plague. But first, a tour of the grounds,” he said, waving at the room in general, “until you feel at home. I’m the deaf kid, which I’m sure you noticed, unless you’re the blind kid. We don’t have one of those right now, but one’s on order.” He stood up and pointed to a short girl in a black skirt and two brightly striped, clashing knee-high socks. She had a pierced lip and was playing with the stud in it with her tongue. “Here we have Odie,” he said, by way of introduction.

  “Like the dog?” Dex asked.

  “No. O. D., as in ‘Oppositional Defiant.’”

  The girl didn’t seem to mind the label. “Plus ADHD,” she added.

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to short-change you,” the deaf kid replied. Dex almost cracked a smile, but it didn’t seem, actually, that anyone was particularly amused. He finally realized what permeated the room: the dark humor of futility. He knew it well. He’d apparently been placed in a “special” Homeroom.

  Home at last.

  The boy with the hearing-aids was pointing to someone else, but before he could make the introduction a shattering detonation shook the entire school.

  “It’s that thunder!” the girl in clashing socks cried, gripping the edges of her desk. Her face went shockingly red. “I can’t stand that thunder! I can’t stand it!”

  Everyone looked at one another, unsure what to do with no teacher in the room. When the shaking finally stopped, it sounded like people were running through the halls.

  The fire alarm suddenly blared, a shrill, ear-splitting siren.

  Before anyone could decide how to respond, Mr. Haslam’s voice came from the speaker on the wall over the door.

  “Students and staff,” he instructed, “please ignore the alarm. False alarm. Please remain in your classrooms.”

  Mercifully, the painful noise cut off.

  Moments later, a short, barrel-chested teacher rushed in with a stack of folders in his arms. He tossed them on his desk, then grabbed the phone sitting next to his computer. After punching a single button, he said, somewhat breathlessly, “I saw who pulled it. A girl, the girl who—Yeah, that’s her,” he said. “I chased her, but—Yes, a few ne’er-do-wells taking advantage, shockingly enough. Yes.” Then he hung up and said, “So sorry to be late!” to his uneasy students. “Tardy on the first day, no less! And I’m the teacher! It’s just that—I was in the office—What a crazy day, even for the first—!”

  The alarm went off again, as if to prove his point.

  “Don’t worry, kids. It’s a copycat, no doubt. These things tend to be contagious, especially on the—Oh, Dexter, I’m so—”

  “This is not a drill,” Haslam interrupted. He sounded much more severe this time. “This is a Lock Out. Students are to remain in Homeroom until notified. I repeat, this is not a drill.”

  “What’s going on!” demanded a buzz-cut girl in all black Dex hadn’t been introduced to. Her entire head was shaking.

  The teacher sat down. “I’m probably not supposed to say anything,” he sighed, “but if it makes you feel better to know, there’s some kind of incident taking place outside. There was an accident on the street that involved a lot of cars. Authorities are on the scene—some kind of search is going on—and, you see, if any police activity gets within a certain distance of the school, by law we have to declare a—”

  “But the building shook!” the clashing-sock girl protested. “Don’t we have to evacuate, like after an earthquake?”

  “Well, that actually might be a good—”

  As if on cue, the thunder boomed outside, rattling the windows and walls.

  “That thunder!” the boy with hearing-aids shouted. “It’s not normal—lightning makes thunder, not the other way around!”

  That’s right, Dex thought, shaking his head. It was amazing how you could fail to note the obvious. But so what?

  From the hall came the sound of more running feet, many more, and also what had to be skateboard wheels whizzing along polished floors, then a teacher yelling, “Get back in the room!” Their teacher did not continue to offer reassurance. He looked hopelessly flummoxed.

  Haslam came on again, this time sounding downright furious: “The Lock Out is still in force!” he shouted. “All students must remain in classrooms. I repeat, all students must remain in classrooms. This is not a drill!”

  “I don’t like this,” grumbled a boy with an unusually large forehead and watery eyes. “I don’t like this. I don’t like this. I don’t like this.” Then he stood up and shouted, “I don’t like this!”

  Someone in the hall suddenly opened the door, a gangling boy with broken glasses hanging halfway off his face.

  “Get out!” he wailed. “Get out! Some older kids—that used to go here—that got expelled—some local gang—they’re on campus to fight! Gang war! GANG WAR!” He ran off to the sound of screaming and banging.

  After a moment of stunned silence in the classroom, the boy with hearing-aids demanded, “What are we going to do? Shouldn’t we lock the—?”

  The thunder crashed again. The entire build
ing jolted. Two boys fell into the room through the open door, wailing on each other. When they crashed through a row of desks and hit the floor, everyone rushed from the room, the teacher included.

  Everyone but Dexter, who’d stayed put. He knew one of these boys. Eyeballs was his name. Dex had gotten him out of jail and set him on the straight and narrow. So much for Words of Power, he thought. But he wasn’t afraid. Let Eyeballs get him next. Let the building fall on his—

  No. Wait a second. What was he thinking?

  Dex rushed into the hall.

  It was madness out there, though it didn’t look like a gang war, not that Dex knew what one looked like. Some kids were throwing punches, but randomly, in all directions. Most everybody else was simply smashing things. Dexter couldn’t help but reflect momentarily that the scene resembled rather closely dreams he’d had many times, dreams in which he was personally destroying a school.

  One boy was crushing in lockers with his huge black combat boots. A girl in pigtails was just sitting on the floor giggling while tearing pages out of a textbook and tossing them around like confetti. Inside classrooms, it looked and sounded like everyone was smashing everything.

  Dreams really do come true, Dex thought, darkly. His backpack was still in the classroom, so he fished up a random, rather heavy one from the floor. He scanned for an enticing target. There: a display case down the hall full of academic awards.

  Dex dove into the throng and began bulling his way through bodies. At some point while he pushed and shoved, he heard a powerful voice cry out over the clamor. It was that barmy pastor.

  “There is nothing that keeps wicked men, at any moment, out of hell,” he screamed, “but the mere pleasure of their God!”

  Dex couldn’t see the man, but his voice was incredibly powerful. He sounded like God himself might.

  “Satan stands ready to fall upon you and seize you as his own!”

  More and more students were pouring out of classrooms up and down the hall, making any movement at all nearly impossible. Some were clearly trying to evacuate, but most were just flailing around. Dex threw elbows to keep people off of him as he fought his way forward a few feet at a time. But then he tripped and fell on his face. The backpack got kicked away.