The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t with Her Mind (The Frost Files)

by Jackson Ford

  I give the dumpster a ferocious push, one that sends an aftershock thudding into the back of my skull. The dumpster rockets along the ground with a squeal of tortured metal. It takes taser guy out at the knees, flipping him over the top. He cartwheels, crashing to the ground with a head-splitting shriek of pain. His right leg is bent at an angle that no leg should ever be bent at. His friend drags him out of the alley, hauling him like a sack of grain.

  And, just like that, I lose my grip on the dumpster. I lean over and retch fried-egg sandwich into the alley.

  I sit there for what feels like a very long time. My mind is a howling, roaring blank.

  The dumpster. When it was full of trash, it had to have weighed five hundred pounds. More. There is no way, at all, that I should have been able to lift it.

  The alley doubles in front of me, triples. I sneeze, sharp and violent. What just happened… it’s not possible. It can’t be. Even during the stress tests the government put me through, I never got close to this.

  Who were those guys? Did they know what I could do? They must have done—they wanted to immobilise me with that taser, not kill me. Then again, that might not mean anything. A taser is a pretty efficient way of putting someone down, whether or not they can move shit with their mind.

  It’s too big to take in. Too much with the headache currently gnawing at my temples. I have to call Reggie. That’s the only thing that matters right now. Call Reggie, and everything will be all right.

  Getting to my feet takes a really long time. Then I have to stand for a minute, trying to talk myself into moving. There are clicking footsteps at the mouth of the alley and a well-dressed woman with a big Louis Vuitton bag passes by. She gives it, and me, a quick glance before hurrying on. Probably thinks the place always looks like that.

  Every step I take reverberates up into my jaw. I’ve never felt like this. It’s like the worst PK hangover I’ve ever had made love to the worst actual hangover I’ve ever had, and they made a baby, and that baby won’t stop screaming.

  It takes me five minutes just to get back onto Winston Street. On my way past the dumpster I reach out and touch it, hesitant, as if it’ll give me an electric shock. It’s cold and heavy. Very heavy. I try to grab it again with my PK and get a fuzzy burst of static at the back of my mind.

  A lance of sunlight blinds me as I step onto the sidewalk. The cars on Main are way too loud. I need my phone, which is in my jacket…

  Which isn’t there. It’s gone. There’s nothing on the sidewalk—no jacket, no phone, no cash, not even my car keys. The only thing left is the little cardboard box Africa gave me, lying discarded in the gutter. Whatever’s inside obviously wasn’t worth stealing.

  I scoop up the box, holding it in both hands, head hanging. I lower myself to the kerb, trying to ignore the sensation of someone banging a fist against the side of my head.

  Movement, to my right. It’s the person whose tent I crushed. It’s a woman. She’s a skin-cover skeleton with wispy blonde hair and a deeply lined face. Track marks dot her arms. She’s wearing a very old T-shirt with a McDonald’s logo over faded stonewash jeans. The tent has been rebuilt, mostly, and the woman sits cross-legged next to it, stuffing potato chips into her mouth.

  Maybe she stole my jacket. My phone. Payback for when I ran into her. But the front door of her tent is open, and inside is… nothing. Zippo. Not even a sleeping bag.

  Well, OK, maybe she hid them somewhere. But where? And what am I going to do? Demand she give them back? She’ll just laugh at me. I can barely walk.

  Come to think of it, how the hell did she not hear what was happening in the alley? Come and investigate? Or are there routine dumpster explosions in this part of town?

  Her tent.

  It’s bright red.

  “Hey.”

  She looks up, scowling. There’s a fear there, a nervousness behind the angry scowl. Like she’s expecting me to lunge forward and slap her. It’s a fear that says, Don’t get involved. Not unless you have to. That’s probably why she didn’t check out the alley.

  “You Jeannette?” I ask.

  She actually flinches, then sticks her chin out like she can tough her way through whatever’s coming. “You ruined my tent,” she says.

  “Here,” I say, tossing her the box.

  She snatches it out of the air, eyes narrowed in confusion.

  “Courtesy of Africa.”

  There’s an awful taste in my mouth: blood and dirt and something sour. I spit, not caring what it looks like.

  “Africa?” Jeannette opens the box, and her face transforms. It’s lit from within by an absolutely gigantic smile that her missing teeth do nothing to spoil.

  Carefully, almost reverently, she lifts the contents out. It’s a tiny origami crane folded out of what looks like a club flyer. And underneath it a small homemade card—corny as hell, with little red cut-out hearts on the cover.

  I look past them, at the stunned, delighted smile on her face. Thinking about Africa.

  Thinking about Nic.

  Reggie. Call. Now. I automatically dip my hand in my pocket for my phone. Then I close my eyes and concentrate very hard on just doing nothing for a few seconds.

  I dig into my jeans again. I’m usually too lazy to stash any coins in my phone case—I just shove them into whatever pocket is handy. My fingers close on some change: five quarters and a nickel.

  “Is there a payphone round here?” I ask Jeannette.

  She flicks a glance at me, as if annoyed to be pulled away from her gift. “Just use your cellphone.”

  I’m about to say something rude when she says, “Over on Boyd. By the Bodega.”

  Boyd. OK. After a long moment I get to my feet, swaying like I’m drunk. My fingertips are numb.

  Just before I start moving, Jeannette says, “His name isn’t Africa, you know.”

  “What?”

  “It’s Idriss. He’s from Senegal.”

  “Then why do they call him Africa?”

  She shrugs. “Easier to remember, I guess.”

  I look long and hard at her, not sure if I want to hug her, give her the finger, or just start screaming.

  In the end I settle for a nod, then take off back in the direction of South Los Angeles Street.

  It takes me a fucking age to find the payphone. I get lost trying to find Boyd, taking a right when I should go left and getting into the mess of streets around Maple and Wall. I half hope I’ll find Africa—Idriss—but he’s nowhere to be seen.

  And there’s no Bodega on Boyd. There are like thirty closed-down stores that might have been Bodegas, once upon a time, but what there definitely isn’t is a payphone. Every person I talk to just gives me a pitying look and asks why I don’t use my cellphone.

  The sun is much higher in the sky now. I’m dripping sweat, my stomach roaring and growling, my eyes scratchy from the smoke in the air. My head feels like NWA are holding a reunion tour inside it, and they brought Eazy E back from the dead as a fucking banshee. I keep looking over my shoulder, worried that the two douchetards who attacked me are going to come back for seconds. But they’re nowhere to be seen, and in any case there are more people on the streets here. I should be OK.

  I showed them my PK. Actually, I gave them the IMAX-Dolby-surround-sound version of my PK, which means Tanner is not going to be thrilled. Not that I had a goddamn choice in the matter.

  Eventually, just as I’m about to abandon Boyd and look elsewhere, I spot the phone, tucked in the shadows of a doorway. The cord has been stripped right down to the wire, the box covered with graffiti. The handset is sticky on my skin, which is something I’d rather not think about now.

  I stand there, relishing the shade, relishing just being able to be still for a second.

  According to the ancient signs behind the graffiti, the rate is fifty cents for two minutes. I drop in two of the five quarters I have on me, wait for the dial tone and call the China Shop offices. A long time ago, Reggie and Tanner made me memorise the number
, which at the time I thought was lame but now makes it look like they predicted the future.

  It’s a long time before anyone answers. “Hello?”

  “Paul?”

  A long silence. Then: “No, sorry.”

  Huh. Obviously my memory isn’t as good as I thought it was. “My bad. Wrong number.”

  “May I ask who’s calling?”

  That’s a weird thing to say when someone dials a wrong number. “Um… yeah. Sorry, I was trying to call a company called China Shop Movers?”

  “Are you a client? Or an employee?”

  The shaded doorway suddenly feels too cold. “Who’s asking?”

  “Ma’am, this is Sergeant D’Antoni from the LAPD. I need you to identify yourself.”

  “What the hell are you doing in our office?”

  “Your office?”

  Shit.

  “OK, ma’am, now I really need you to identify yourself. If you’re an employee, you should know that we’re here with a warrant, and—”

  I slam the phone back into its cradle hard enough for it to crack. I actually take a step back like it had burned me.

  First Steven Chase. Then I get attacked. Then a cop answers when I call the office.

  What in the almighty storm of fuck is going on?

  EIGHTEEN

  Jake

  It should have been over by now.

  Three targets. Three locations. Downtown, West Hollywood, Burbank. Taken care of by 6 a.m. tops. Traffic was never going to be an issue, not when his Enfield can slip through it like a knife through ribs.

  What it can’t slip through is an accident on the 405—a snarled spot on the Sepulveda Pass as he heads into the Valley. An overturned truck which closes all but one lane, filling the others with emergency vehicles and squeezing traffic all the way up to Van Nuys.

  Jake straddles his bike, sandwiched between a delivery van and the concrete barrier at the edge of the freeway, grinding his teeth. Clenching and unclenching his jaw as if he can crush the problem into paste. In the east the sun is starting to brighten the sky.

  Chuy had explained the connection between the three targets, and why that meant that Jake had to do them all in a single night. If any of them got wind of the fact that the others were gone, they’d take off for sure. It would make them harder to track down, expose Jake to more attention, give the cops more time to gather evidence. Not good.

  The congested highway, thick with fumes and horns. The driver of the van beside him is picking his nose, finger in halfway to the second knuckle. He takes a sip from a cardboard coffee cup as he digs, barely pausing. He glances at Jake, bleary uninterested eyes sweeping over him. Jake gets the insane urge to shatter the glass, drive a shard into one of those sleepy eyes.

  He has spent over two decades in a kind of furious, focused control of his power, and he has never been closer to letting it go than right now. Just unleashing it: shattering glass, twisting metal, breaking bones and crushing skulls, anything within reach. The traffic jam constricts his entire body, crushing him from all sides.

  If he can’t get this done, Chuy will never help him.

  On the day he’d used his power at the LA Mission, after the woman had seen him, he’d sat and eaten his food in a kind of stupor, relief and terror nearly paralysing him, his hands shaking, spilling soup from his spoon. He’d eaten and left as fast as he could.

  It had been a few days before he’d returned to the Mission. He didn’t see the man he would come to know as Chuy inside while he ate his food. But as he walked back down the block to where he had parked his bike, a car drew up alongside, headlights piercing the darkened Skid Row street.

  The window had rolled down, and the man had said, “You the guy who can move shit without picking it up?”

  The sentence didn’t make sense. The words did, but together they pinballed around Jake’s mind. When they finally stopped, he felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. Maybe the woman didn’t believe what she’d seen, but she’d mentioned it to someone. Who had maybe mentioned it to someone else. Who was now in front of him, ready to destroy everything.

  “Get in,” the man said.

  He’d almost ran. Just fucking booked it out of there, out of LA, out of California, away from the only other person who realised what he could do.

  Instead, half-believing he was dreaming, he’d got in the car.

  It was an old Honda Civic; the floor a drift of flyers and burger wrappers and soft-drink cups. The man wore an old flannel shirt, untucked, buttoned to the neck, like gangsters Jake had seen in East LA. Without a word the man pulled the car away from the kerb, heading north, away from the Row.

  Jake had sat, hands gripping his knees, knuckles bloodless. Twenty years he’d kept his Gift a secret, twenty goddamn years, and then he’d thrown it all away. Because, what? He’d got careless? What a stupid, pointless thing to do. What a waste. It was going to cost him everything.

  The silence had gone on a little too long, the guy driving like Jake wasn’t in the car. They were just entering Chinatown.

  “Look, man,” he’d said eventually. “I don’t want any trouble. If I disappear, there’re gonna be people looking for me. I got friends at the Mission.”

  He’d hardly talked to anybody at the Mission, just shown up, ate and left. But this guy might not know that.

  The driver had said nothing. He’d glanced at Jake briefly, then looked back at the road. Neon washed across his face.

  Jake licked his lips. They felt like bones in the desert, dry and smooth and hard. “I’m serious.” A sudden flicker of anger, eclipsing the fear. “Let me out. Right fucking now.”

  The man looked over almost lazily. His voice was cold and calm. “Relax, homie. I wanted to rat you out to someone, that woulda happened a long time ago.”

  “Rat me out? For what? I didn’t do nothing.”

  “Come on, dude. Really?” The car turned left, heading for 110. “This ain’t a shakedown. We cool. I’m just curious, that’s all.”

  “Curious about what?”

  The man gave him an amused look and said nothing. They’d turned onto the freeway, almost immediately getting locked up in traffic.

  “It’s just this… thing I do,” Jake had said.

  “Moving shit without using your hands is just a thing you do.” A shake of the head. “Damn, man.”

  Jake stared out across the highway, heart hammering. Across the way, Dodger Stadium lit up the night. He wondered briefly if there was a game on: a hundred thousand cheering fans, none of whom knew or cared about the predicament he was in. What he wouldn’t give to be there, lost in the crowd, anonymous.

  The thought didn’t sit quite right. He wanted out of this car, true… but there was something appealing about being the centre of attention. Even from a man he didn’t know.

  Dimly Jake realised he knew nothing about the history of Dodger Stadium. Didn’t have a single clue when it was built, or by whom, or even why. For some reason, this bothered him more than the situation he was in.

  “You must have killed it in talent shows when you were a kid,” the man was saying.

  “What?”

  “Or like, being lazy. Fuck getting off the couch; just bring the remote over here, beer out the fridge. Most people gotta train dogs or some shit, but not you, homie.”

  Jake couldn’t believe how calm the man was, like he was mentioning something he’d seen in a movie somewhere. He said so, and the man laughed. It was a throaty sound, rich and full.

  He reached over and put the radio on, real low. A salsa station, one of the dozen or so in the LA area. Jake hated salsa usually, but at that moment it fitted right in, just another part of the dream.

  “So what happened? You get bitten by a radioactive spider, some shit like that?”

  “No. Nah, no spider.”

  “What then?”

  “My mom, I guess. Or my dad, whoever he was. I don’t know.”

  “She have it too? The mind-moving thing?”

&nbs
p; “I… No. I don’t think so.”

  “For real? Y’all don’t know?” The man’s face had creased, half amusement, half disbelief. “Ain’t that a bitch.”

  “I tried to find out,” Jake heard himself say. “But… well, I couldn’t.”

  “Hmm.” The man had suddenly thrust a meaty hand across the console. “Name’s Chuy.”

  “Jake. Listen, where we going? My bike—”

  “Your bike’ll be fine. That spot you always park it in is on one of the LAPD patrol routes. Nobody’s jacking shit along there.” He either ignored or didn’t notice Jake’s look of surprise. “I’ll be real with you. I’m not gonna blab to nobody. Like I said, we cool. But in return, you gotta be straight with me too. I wanna know what you can do.”

  Jake jerks out of the memories as the traffic begins to move. He guns the Enfield’s motor, and before long he’s past the accident and cruising through the streets of Burbank.

  The fires burning in La Tuna and Wildwood Canyons to the north haven’t reached the city—yet—but the hills are a mass of drifting smoke edged with a pale, sickly orange. The air is thick, almost viscous. More than once a fire engine rushes past him, siren wailing. The buzzing of the aerial firefighting planes is almost constant. The new normal, someone on a TV at the Mission called it, some Fox News talking head, the word HELLSTORM burning below her. Which is the most insane thing he’s ever heard.

  A surge of panic—what if they’ve evacuated already? What if his target is gone? But the few people he does see look calm, almost bored. No cars being jammed with possessions, no one running down the sidewalk, no panicked shouts. He passes a jogger, a young woman with a bright orange headband, chest hitching as she breathes in the smoky air.

  The house is a prosperous-looking single-storey on East Orange Grove, painted yellow, set back from the street behind a huge knobbly jacaranda tree. Low-cut hedges border the property, and the pot plants around the front door look green and healthy. As he parks the bike a few blocks away, he checks his backpack. Two pieces of rebar left. That should be more than enough, especially if he’s careful. He has no desire to get surprised a second time.