by Bob Bannon
When he got into the mall, he looked back to the window and saw that she had waited until he got inside. He almost thought she might get out of the car and follow him, but she ended up pulling away.
He walked back outside into a bitter, cold wind and got just past Jefferson Street when he decided it was too cold to walk all the way back to the woods. He found the alley where Devlin had quietly directed him the day he went after Logan Oswald in the schoolyard. The last time he was in this alley he remembered the crippling pain boring through his left eye. This time, when Devlin manifested there was no pain at all. The transformations were happening pretty seamlessly.
Jonah found himself back in the tree-house standing by the generator. In front of him was the camping hammock, and on that, the notebook was open. In what Jonah had come to be aware of as Devlin’s handwriting, was one simple line:
I’m not a taxi, chief
That almost made Jonah giggle. Until he had another mode of transportation, or the weather cleared up, Devlin was going to get stuck with a lot of footwork. And, after all, wasn’t he the chief?
Then a thought struck him as he changed into his basketball shorts and his t-shirt.
“That doesn’t mean go steal a car or anything,” he said sternly to the walls.
XXII
On Saturday night, Jonah had Devlin call Mrs. MacIntyre from the same payphone with the same blocked number and pretend to be his father again. This time the conversation was even shorter. Unfortunately, ‘Doctor Havensby’ was simply too busy to come to the dance as he was preparing for a conference at the college and just could not get away. As for Eric staying over on Saturday, he said that he may be home too late, but would appreciate if she could take the boys just one more night. This worked out well, since Mrs.MacIntyre would want to drive the boys back to Jonah’s house after the dance and then probably demand an introduction. Since Jonah had neither a real house, nor a real father, the idea of Eric trying to sleep over would have to wait for a better plan to develop. ‘Doctor Havensby’ also said he would drop Jonah off at the house at precisely seven o’clock sharp. He then seemingly changed his mind and asked if he couldn’t drop Jonah off at the mall around six-thirty as that would save him some time. Of course Mrs. MacIntyre agreed with the whole plan.
Saturday evening was blustery, cold, snowy evening. While he was getting ready, Jonah noticed even the heavy velvet curtains were fighting to keep out the cold wind. The curtain near the generator blew all the way open and he closed it, then pushed one of the camping hammocks against it, hoping that would keep it in place.
He finished getting ready and then put on his coat and gloves. He decided he’d rather change into Devlin inside the tree-house than out on the patio. After Devlin manifested, he pushed open the front door and was greeted with a flurry of snow and wind. He bundled up his black coat and blew on his hands to keep warm. He was surprised at how much snow had fallen under the canopy of trees.
“Alrighty, chief,” he said to no one. “Another run to the mall, huh?” Then he blew on his hands again. “Let’s see if I can make it before I turn into a cherry Popsicle out here.”
He launched himself over the railing and hit the ground running.
Within minutes Jonah realized he was in the alley off of Jefferson Street again. Instead of stopping at the tree-line, Devlin had run him much closer to the mall. He quickly zipped his coat and threw up his hood and then dashed across the street to the mall parking lot. There was no traffic to dodge and very few cars in the parking lot. He wondered if Devlin could have run him all the way to the front door, but thought it was smart of him not to try something like that.
He found Eric on their usual bench, right outside of Vineyard, playing a game on his phone. He was already dressed up in a white shirt, khaki pants, and a brown tie. He looked ready to go.
“Dude, you’re already ready?” Jonah asked.
“Mom said it might take a while to get over to the school with the snow and stuff, so she brought my clothes here. We’ve just been waiting for you.”
Eric stood and put his phone in his pocket and started walking over to the store. Once inside, they found the store empty except for Mrs. MacIntyre, who was adjusting her red dress and checking her makeup in a full-length mirror by the register.
“Wow, mom,” Eric said.
“You look really nice, Mrs. MacIntyre,” Jonah added.
She turned and put her hand on her chest with a broad smile. “Well thank you boys. It’s not often I have two dates for the dance.” And she turned back to admire herself again.
“It’s not often she has one,” Eric said under his breath in Jonah’s direction.
“I heard that,” she chimed, not turning from the mirror.
“I didn’t say anything,” he chimed back.
She turned and walked past them and ruffled Eric’s hair on the way by. He quickly pulled it all back down into place.
Mrs. MacInyre pushed a button on a keypad by the glass double-doors at the front of the store and a metal security gate started scrolling down into place in front of the doors. When it touched the floor, it automatically stopped and she locked the keypad with a key, which apparently meant the gate would be locked into place. She then locked the glass double-doors.
She handed Eric his coat and picked up her purse and coat from the counter and ushered them to the back of the store. Jonah had never seen this part of the store. In the back was a very small office which doubled as a break room. There was a sink and a refrigerator on one wall and a desk and two filing cabinets along the other wall. The rest of the room was taken up with loads of boxes, some of which were open, and some weren’t.
Along the back wall of the store, she turned out all of the lights, then closed the door that separated the office from the store and sealed the door shut with the snap of a deadbolt lock.
They bundled up in their outdoor clothes and then went out a red metal door on the other side of the office. There was a handle on the inside, but when the door swung shut there was only a keyhole on the exterior.
It did take them a while to get to the school in the gusting wind and snow, and Eric and Jonah kept the talking down to a minimum, both because Eric’s mom appeared to be concentrating very hard on driving, but all three wanted to hear the weather report coming from the radio.
There were fewer cars in the parking lot than they expected. They arrived exactly on time, which accounted for a smaller crowd, but with so few cars there, Eric’s mother wondered aloud if the dance was cancelled.
Once inside, the principal assured Mrs. MacIntyre that he had considered cancelling, but that the snow was supposed to stop by nine-thirty, so he felt it was safe enough to continue. They dropped their coats off at the coat check, which one of the high school teachers was over-seeing, and Mrs. MacIntyre chatted with him politely about the weather as well. Then they walked into the gym.
The gym was lavishly decorated to fit the winter theme, which just seemed to remind everyone of the weather outside. But it looked amazing to Jonah, who had never seen such a thing except on television. Blue metallic streamers draped from the ceiling almost everywhere he looked. Those matched the blue tablecloths on the tables surrounding an area that was cut out as a dance floor. In the center of the dance floor was a life-size ice sculpture of the school’s mascot, a cougar. It stood on its hind legs with its front paws out in a wild, fighting gesture. It revolved slowly on a spinning pedestal and gleamed in the lights coming from the disco ball in the center of the ceiling. The music was loud, but not so loud that you couldn’t talk over it. The song that was playing was one of the songs Eric had introduced him to.
One wall was floor to ceiling windows with large glass double-doors. There were twinkling white Christmas lights all along the edges of the windows and someone had painted a huge snowman on one and a scene of people ice skating on the other.
Four boys who looked around his age were sitting on the bleachers talking. Nearby, four girls the same age were
huddled nearby complimenting each other on dresses and jewelry. There were three high school couples on the dance floor and two more at a table.
Emma Wong, looking amazing in her blue dress with the sheer black accents, was talking with a group of girls at a table to the left. Three boys looked to be deep in conversation about something else at the same table. When she saw Jonah, she broke off her conversation and walked over with a huge smile on her face. Jonah grinned ear to ear when he saw her. She was dazzling.
“You came!” She said and then smiled.
“I said we would,” Jonah replied.
“I know. Eric did too. It’s just, well, I don’t know.” And then she blushed.
Mrs. MacIntyre picked up on the spark and said to Eric “Why don’t you come get your mom a nice cup of punch?”
“Oh no, Mrs. MacIntrye,” Emma butted in. “Sorry, but we kind of have a table going over here already.”
No one was more surprised than Eric.
“My dad’s just over there though,” Emma added.
When she looked up, she saw Doctor Wong just on the other side of the gym talking to one of the other mothers, he caught her eye just as she looked over so he raised his hand in a wave. She waved back. “Well, I guess I’ll go hang out with the old folks then,” she said, taking the not-so-subtle hint and she crossed the floor.
Emma took the arm of both boys and led them over to the table. Eric knew these kids, but looked as uncomfortable as Jonah about going over there.
An hour later the room was positively full and very loud. It seemed to Jonah that the larger the crowd got, the louder the music got. People had to practically yell at each other to hear.
Jonah took a moment and looked around. The dance was only for kids in junior high and high school, but the age differences were certainly glaringly obvious. There were very few junior high kids dancing. Most of them were in clusters around tables, except Jonah noticed that most of those tables were split with girls on one side and boys on the other. The tables of freshmen his age seemed like at least the boys and girls were talking to each other.
He and Eric and Emma were sitting with seven other kids. He had learned the boy’s names were Mike, Alex and Nick. Two of the girls were Emma’s friends Heather and Courtney. The other two girls were named Bailey and Kendall. Instead of separating into groups, they were seated boy-girl-boy-girl.
That was also the case for most of the older high school kids, although most had clearly invaded the dance floor, a lot of others seemed to be sitting very close to each other.
A half hour later, he saw Logan Oswald enter the gym followed by Mason and Tyler. All of them had dates, but he didn’t know who the girls were. Those pairings seemed to send the girls at Jonah’s table into a frenzy of whispered conversation.
The night was incredibly fun. Jonah couldn’t remember the last time he had so much fun. It was hard for him and Eric to jump into the conversations that were happening around the table at first, but eventually everyone found some common ground. When the boys started telling incredibly gross jokes to freak out the girls at the table, Jonah chimed in with a joke he had heard on television. He just assumed he’d get called out for it, but when the joke ended in a great, loud burp, it sent the boys into hysterics. The girls tried not to laugh. Eric followed up with a burp of his own, which sent the boys at the table into a contest of sorts. Bailey and Kendall stood and said they were going for punch.
Even though Emma had asked him twice to take a walk, Jonah made excuses that he didn’t really want to. His main concern was leaving Eric at the table, even though they seemed to be fitting in. But by the time she asked a third time if he just wanted to go over and get some punch, he noticed that Heather Montrose had engaged Eric in a discussion about their last science test. She felt the last question was a trick which had no right or wrong answer. Jonah was frankly surprised that a girl that looked like Heather Montrose was in Advanced Science.
Over the last hour and a half, Jonah and Emma had talked about a variety of things. She wanted to know what it was like to be home-schooled. Jonah left out all the lies about tutors and things he had made up for Eric’s mother and told her the truth. How his father taught him from books and the internet. He, of course, left out that he wondered how much he already knew when he became human, since he’d technically only been learning anything for the last five years.
They also talked about their common bond of not having mothers. Neither one of them said they felt they were missing out on anything, and Emma had her grandmothers, but Jonah had to admit, it was just him and his father, so he didn’t know if there was anything a mother or grandmother could teach him differently.
By the time they walked to the corner to get a cup of punch, Jonah had seemingly run out of things to say or talk about. The thing was, he didn’t want to stop talking to Emma. He could listen to Emma talk all day long. She felt the same way.
“I didn’t think Heather and Eric talked to each other. Is that weird?” He asked, gesturing toward the table.
“I don’t know if it’s that they really don’t like each other. I think it’s more that they’ve never had the opportunity to really talk to each other.”
“Oh. That kind of makes sense. Your friends seem nice,” he said at the punch table.
“Thanks. They seem to like you.” She smiled.
“They do? I thought they were just being nice.”
“Well, there were questions about the eyes at first…” She trailed off as she looked directly into them still smiling.
He blushed and looked away.
“Relax,” she said, putting a hand on his arm. “I really like your eyes.”
His head snapped back on its own. He starred into her dark brown eyes and his face lit up in a huge smile. Somewhere in his brain he was dimly aware that her hand was still on his arm.
Suddenly there was a crash. The glass wall exploded inward with the flash of two sets of headlights. Fortunately, there were no tables that close to the windows, but the people closest went flying out of the way and tables and chairs were upended by the surprised people who also fled.
Four men climbed out onto the hoods of two large military SUV vehicles. It was hard to see them in the glare of the headlights, but they were definitely wearing military gear and wore dark masks that covered their heads. They were firing weapons into the crowd. Kids went down left and right. The Sheriff, who had only been in the room for twenty minutes, was one of the first to be shot.
Jonah’s first instinct was to get back to the table to find Eric, but Eric appeared right beside them. His first instinct was to get as far away from the men firing into the crowd, which meant this side of the room.
Emma was scanning the room for her father, she saw him diagonally across the room in one corner near where the window had blown out. “Daddy!” She screamed.
Just then, Eric saw his mother in the same area. “Mom!” He yelled. “Mom, over here!” He waved his arms over his head.
That’s when Jonah noticed that there was no music. There were people screaming, but the music had gone dead. He looked up and noticed that the lights had gone out as well. Someone had cut the power and the only light now was coming from the headlights.
As soon as Mrs. MacIntyre spotted Eric, she bolted into a sprint, but Doctor Wong caught her just in time and then was hit in the back by weapons fire and went down. Emma screamed. Mrs. MacIntyre screamed as well and then was hit in the shoulder.
Emma, Jonah and Eric made a dash for the door, but it was blocked from the other side. That didn’t stop a crowd from trying to get through though.
Logan Oswald was right beside them trying to push through the crowd when a shot hit him in the back of the shoulder. Jonah bent down to try and lift him back up, but saw that he was unconscious and he couldn’t do anything. The rounds the weapons were firing weren’t bullets. They were round metal balls covered in small spikes. Jonah saw an electric charge circle though the spikes and then die out. These bullets they
were firing weren’t meant to kill, they were just meant to knock people out, like getting hit with a taser.
Eric pulled Jonah back up by the back of his shirt. “I thought you were hit!” He yelled over the crowd.
Just then, a teacher yelled “The stage door! Get to the stage door!”
They spun and saw one of the teachers was holding a door open on the back wall. There was a stage hidden behind two floor-to-ceiling black velvet drapes and he was holding open the door that went back stage. People flooded past him, so the three of them went as well.
Once inside, there were four steps that went up onto the stage to the left and, to the right, a long cement hallway that continued on. Everybody else never stopped, they continued all the way down the hall and the three of them got swept up in the crowd.
At the end of the hallway was a metal door that had been swung open and led outside. Outside, the crowd dispersed in all directions. For whatever reason, the attackers had missed that there was an exit on this side of the building.
Once they hit the rear parking lot Emma screamed “Stop! We have to go back! My dad! Your mom!” She screamed at Eric.
“We can’t do anything! We have to get away!”Eric yelled back. “They’d want us to get away!” He turned to Jonah. “Can Adam or Devlin do anything? Like, anything at all?”
“I don’t know,” Jonah said. “I can’t just leave you here though.”
The crowd coming out of the metal doors had dwindled and there were more shots coming from inside. They sounded closer. Jonah guessed that maybe a little more than half the crowd had escaped.
“We’re going to need one of them to get away,” Eric said.
Jonah was frazzled. He wasn’t really sure what he should do or if there was anything the others inside him could do. Getting away seemed to be the best option right now.
“Okay, hold on.” Jonah said, and went to move behind a dumpster.
“Wait!” Emma yelled. “What are you talking about? What’s going on?”
