Shards

by F. J. R. Titchenell

  I don’t forget things.

  So with school about to start and the hallucinations as strong as ever, if not stronger, I had called in to the San Francisco Chronicle and taken out the personal ad he’d dictated to me.

  Experienced carpenter offers sanding, finishing, and polishing services to amateur craftsmen.

  Sanding away the Splinters. Ha ha.

  The other messages I wrote that morning were quite a bit longer and a lot more explicit. They felt more ungainly and exposed in my bag on the way over to Aldo’s than incriminating photos or illegal weapons, weighed down with all the heavy, dangerous words that I never use.

  Probably the only person who liked being in Aldo’s house less than I did was Aldo, and I ran a quick calculation of exactly how many minutes were left before I could reasonably insist that I had to go home for dinner before knocking on the door.

  “What?” Aldo’s mother answered when she opened it, slightly more irritable than even her standard fashion. I could smell fresh peroxide in her chronically chemical-burned hair. “He’s downstairs,” she said, forcing a miniscule smile for me.

  “Thanks, Mrs. Kessler.” I matched the curve of her mouth and hurried past her toward the stairs. She returned to the kitchen table and the hushed conversation with Aldo’s father that I’d apparently interrupted.

  Both Aldo’s parents were skinny and withered-looking, with the tough kind of muscles underneath that other people, people who don’t have to account for the possibility of having to fight everyone they meet, probably wouldn’t notice.

  Aldo had never noticed anything Splintery about them, but whether human or Splinter, they both gave me the strong impression that one legal authority or another was the only thing preventing them from using those tough, skinny muscles to try to snap my neck.

  Aldo’s house and mine had the same floor plan, and we both called the one room at the bottom of the stairs our own. I don’t know if the clutter along the way in Aldo’s house of old junk mail and boxes of packaged food and Mrs. Kessler’s collection of bath and massage gadgets was better or worse than the empty sterility of my own mother’s decorating style. In both places, it was always a relief to get that basement door closed behind me.

  “Aldo?” I asked the empty room.

  “Just a sec,” Aldo called from the adjoining half bathroom. After closer to six and a half seconds, he opened the door and turned a little to his left to strike what was probably supposed to be a jaunty pose. “What do you think?”

  I visually scanned him for some new invention, maybe a wrist-mounted, electric dart gun or a near-invisible modified Bluetooth, but found nothing.

  “Of what?”

  His smile flickered and then stabilized again with an eye roll.

  “Of the outfit.”

  “Oh.” I looked again over the black undershirt, the almost unwrinkled blue button-down hanging untucked down to the front pockets of the newly-washed pair of dark, only slightly faded jeans. The hole-free tennis shoes were securely double-knotted.

  “No hazards that I can see,” I confirmed for him. He kept his unnatural sideways posture, waiting for something more. “You didn’t get it dry cleaned, did you? Because you know those chemicals are flammable.”

  “How does it look?” Aldo snapped, dropping the pose.

  I thought about the letters in my bag, the dead people in my room, the ad in the paper, the smirk on my mother’s face at breakfast that morning when she’d shared the latest town gossip about Sheriff Diaz’s fictional alcohol problem. We both knew the only reason he’d been found wandering the streets confused last week was because he’d just been let out of the pod to satisfy the latest draft of the treaty. I thought about how my Network couldn’t scatter fast enough after our most recent joke of a meeting.

  The tenuous structure of deals and impasses our world had been built on was shaking more violently than it ever had before, and Aldo wanted to know how he looked.

  “You asked me over for a fashion show?”

  “Hey, you only get one first day of high school.” There was a hint of attempted irony in his inflection, but whether he was serious or not, I couldn’t tell.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “You only get one first concussion too. That doesn’t make it worth dressing up for.”

  “Come on!” He punched me on the shoulder with an extra hard thump of frustration. “You’re a girl! You’re supposed to know these things!”

  “I own seven distinct articles of clothing,” I reminded him. “I buy them in bulk.”

  “Okay, fine, but you still have eyes, and you go to high school, so you’re the best I’ve got. If a new guy walked in wearing this on the first day, would it make a good first impression on the average people you keep tabs on all day?”

  You don’t get to make a first impression, I wanted to tell him. You don’t get to be the new guy. You were the new guy when your parents gave up on homeschooling you when you were eight, dropped you into Prospero Elementary in the middle of the semester, and you announced that you were approximately three-and-a-half times smarter than anyone else in the room, called Patrick Keamy a plebian, and would have ended up in the nurse’s office after recess if I hadn’t felt like landing myself in the principal’s office instead by jumping in and practicing the beginner’s arm lock I’d just learned. That’s your first impression. You stopped being the new guy when you became the freaky girl’s freakier pet mini-freak, and I’m sorry I can’t fix that and win you the shallow, pointless respect of a bunch of uninformed humans and Splinters pretending to be uninformed humans by picking out a shirt for you.

  But I didn’t say any of that because, before I could start, Aldo grabbed a hairbrush and started re-parting his baby blonde hair on the left instead of the middle, and I saw his ear twitch, that tiny little nervous tic that no other kind of stress, not even being hemmed in by Creature Splinters in the forest at night, could ever draw out of him, the tic that meant that his mother’s mood had nothing to do with my visit.

  I scanned him automatically for the third time, this time for bruises. For better and worse, Aldo and I both have extremely quick-healing, damage-resistant bodies, whether thanks to blind luck or lifelong conditioning, I’m not sure.

  Even more lifelong in his case than mine. At least most of my old scars and clicking, weather-sensitive joints had come courtesy of the Splinters, and not even from the one masquerading as my father.

  I searched, but there was still nothing to be seen but that brittle, determined attempt at a cool, carefree smile of the kind that goes with shallow, pointless wardrobe choices.

  “You look fine, Aldo.”

  The smile strengthened.

  “Are you sure?” he asked. “Because I’ve got this one with pinstripes that’s supposed to make me look taller. Hang on, I’ll get it. You tell me which one works better.”

  “If I do, can I ask you a favor?”

  There must have been something off in my casual tone that more naturally perceptive ears could catch because Aldo reappeared immediately, shirt draped over his arm as if he’d already forgotten it was there, and didn’t answer with a joke.

  “Name it.”

  Too late to change my mind, I pulled out the four plain, unstamped envelopes

  “It’s nothing much,” I said. “I’ll probably just need you to stash these away somewhere and forget about them. But if you could, just make sure they get to the right people if . . .” if I get murdered or go completely insane “. . . if anything happens.”

  Aldo took the envelopes warily and tried to smile again. “Uh, Mina, is there something you want to tell me?”

  “I told you guys already,” I said. “We’re a lot closer to all-out war than usual. I can’t say exactly what’s going to happen.”

  “I can tell you what’s going to happen,” he said, turning the envelopes over one at a time to read the names on the fronts.

  Ben. Mom. Kevin.

  “We’re going to put up the biggest fight humanity’s ever gi
ven. Unless the laws of nature suddenly stop applying and you decide to bitch out on us, in which case we’re completely screwed.”

  I tried to smile back, even though this was the last thing in the world I wanted to hear.

  “The laws of nature are applying just fine,” I assured him.

  He turned over the last envelope.

  Aldo.

  He raised one pale eyebrow at me.

  “Just in case,” I repeated. “And they’re sealed, by the way. As long as I’m able to ask to see that they’re still sealed, you’d better still be able to show me.”

  “Mina!”

  “I know my handwriting, and I know what it looks like traced over. And steam’s not going to loosen it any. I used real glue.”

  “Mina, seriously, don’t even joke about this.”

  “I’m not joking,” I said, and it took no effort to sound absolutely humorless.

  “Uh, okay, rephrasing: Please tell me you are joking about this.”

  His accompanying laugh wobbled even harder than was usual for his half-broken voice, so I eased off the warnings.

  “Hey, we’re still human so far, aren’t we?”

  I thought I’d hit pretty close to my target of a reassuring tone, but Aldo apparently disagreed. The tic at the front of his ear was as rapid as ever—if anything, I’d made it worse—and he had a tight look at the inner corners of his eyes that sometimes came with it, the one that, as far as my stunted intuition could tell, looked something like, “Please don’t hurt me; it’s not my fault.” What “it” was, I still didn’t have the slightest idea.

  I’ve never known exactly what to say to that look, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t “I need you to run the Network if I can’t, because they don’t trust Ben enough, and no one else has quite the necessary dedication.” And it couldn’t be anything as transparently false as “everything’s going to be all right.”

  So on a sudden, mad impulse, I just spread my arms.

  Aldo stared at me skeptically, expecting some trick or surprise test. I couldn’t blame him. I usually avoid non-essential physical contact, even with other humans. I find that too much of it makes it harder to accept, and therefore harder to prepare for, all possible future scenarios involving the other person. I suspect it makes it harder for them to think that way about me too, especially in Aldo’s case.

  The different kind of risk-taking rush that came from writing those letters and carrying them in public must have left me a little reckless.

  Or maybe it was another side effect of my malfunctioning brain.

  When he still didn’t move to respond, I grabbed him by the collar of the formerly unwrinkled blue shirt and crushed him hard against me.

  After another moment of confusion, Aldo locked his arms securely around my middle, the way he used to in elementary school whenever someone bigger than he was looked a little too hard at us, dropping the envelopes and the second shirt around our feet.

  He didn’t cry. We didn’t say anything, certainly none of the dangerously loaded things securely sealed in those envelopes, so we just stood there, I don’t know for how long. My usually fine-tuned internal clock chose that moment to black out from some mental power surge and reset to 88:88, refusing to count for me.

  I should have been uncomfortably aware of the meager height Aldo had gained in the past six years, how his head now rested just above my breasts, near-nonexistent though they were, how our hips aligned at almost the same level. I should have been worried about the hours this one incident might cause him to waste, pondering useless, impossible scenarios, or about the way he’d very obviously doused himself, in spite of all his good sense, with some kind of sharply sweet-scented aerosol product that I’d probably bought him to use as an accelerant.

  Instead, I just counted the slowing twitches of his ear nudging through my black, long-sleeved Costco t-shirt and marveled at Aldo—this one fragile little human, this one tiny ray of human life, human thought, human intelligence that I’d somehow managed to preserve other than myself almost from the very beginning. One tiny, but all-important, perpetually tenuous victory; probably the closest I’d ever come to what it must feel like to hold a baby.

  So much for my designs on passing the provisional backup torch.

  The terrible awkwardness that I’d had no right to expect to avoid finally settled in, and Aldo tried first to disperse it.

  “Not that this isn’t nice and all,” he rasped into my shirt, exaggerating the pressure I was still applying to his ribcage, “but now you’re really starting to scare me. I mean, if it wouldn’t be the worst, sickest joke ever made by anyone, I’d ask you who you are and what you’ve done with Mina Todd.”

  I let go then and pushed him backward, hard enough to make him trip into the half-open bathroom door and slide, snickering, down the frame.

  I collapsed to my knees next to him, choking out paralyzing waves of jagged, uncomfortable laughter at the worst, sickest joke ever not-quite-made by anyone. Our overwrought diaphragms made any innocent traces of reflexive eye-watering entirely understandable.

  “Just keep them safe,” I repeated with the first bit of steadiness I could drag back into my voice, gathering the envelopes from where they’d scattered on the carpet.

  “Of course,” Aldo gasped back, taking them and sliding them into one of the many compartments he’d carved out behind his room’s baseboard. I picked up the pinstriped shirt and tossed it to him.

  “Go on,” I said. “I guess I officially owe you some terrible advice.”

  4.

  Home of the Poets

  Ben

  I’ve had a lot of first days of school in a lot of different towns, and I was nervous on every one of them. After a while I thought I’d get used to them. I never did. Every time there were the same questions. Would I make a good impression? Would I make friends? Would this finally be the school that sticks?

  Of course, this time there was also the fact that my school was likely swarming with Splinters to consider.

  Mom drove me that first morning. She’d told me she wouldn’t always be able to, not with the schedule she had to keep at Town Hall, but she wanted to at least drop me off on my first day. It was one of our few traditions, and it had always been awkward for me, knowing that we would be having another first day at a new school within the next year or two.

  Given my imprisonment in Prospero, I at least knew I didn’t have to fear leaving anytime soon.

  I pulled the folded-up schedule from my back pocket and studied it.

  Period 1: AP American History—Blair, 15

  Period 2: Wood/Metal Shop—Finn, Vocational Ed. Room

  Period 3: Physical Education—Perkins/King, Gym

  Period 4: Calculus—Velasquez, 24

  Period 5: Biology—Copper, 31

  Period 6: Spanish III—Montoya, 03

  Period 7: American Lit.—Hansen, 09

  Mom was excited that I tested into the AP History program up here, and it took everything I had to hold back my pride. The bigger surprise came when I had first seen who one of my P.E. teachers would be. I knew Haley’s mom, my Aunt (but not quite aunt) Christine, did some coaching at the school, but I didn’t know she taught P.E. That could be awkward.

  Welcome to small town life, Ben.

  “Are you excited?” my mom asked.

  “Yeah. I think so,” I said.

  “At least, this time, you’ll have some friends going in,” she said hopefully.

  I remembered how quickly things fell apart after the meeting. “Yeah, that’ll be nice.”

  “That reminds me, I caught Mina’s dad yesterday. He said he’d still love to have us over for dinner some night, kind of a welcome to the neighborhood sort of thing. What do you think?”

  It took effort not to show anger. Sam Todd, Mina’s dad, put up a pretty good human front. Charming, funny, knowledgeable on pretty much every odd topic. He even helped us unpack the truck when we moved in; it was easy to see why my mom liked him. But benea
th the surface was a cold, calculating member of the Splinters’ inner core. He granted me the kindness (his word, not mine) of letting me leave town so I could help Mom move, but made it very clear that once I got back, I could never leave again.

  No, Mom, that would be a terrible idea because if he’s inviting us over, he’s probably trying to find out more information about us, and since you don’t know about the Splinter problem, you’re liable to say something offhand that he’ll later find a way to use against us.

  That’s what I wanted to say. What I actually said was, “Could be fun. I just don’t know how easy it’ll be to get the time together. Mr. Todd runs the hobby shop almost all by himself, and Mrs. Todd’s a lawyer and a member of the town council. They pretty much leave Mina alone all the time.”

  “Oh, I see,” she said. “Well, if we can work out the time, that’d be great. Until then, feel free to invite Mina over anytime!”

  I smiled. “No problem.”

  We got to school early, before there were too many cars or students around. She wished me a good first day and drove off, leaving me to get a good look at my new school.

  Prospero High School combined the worst architectural trends of the 1950s with what had to be every pastel color the 1980s had to offer. Most of its classrooms were ringed around the outer edges of the school, surrounding a couple of grass-filled inner quads, each with a decorative fountain in the center (only one of which worked). Outside this perimeter to the north end of school was a soccer field, while off to the west side were the gym, football field, and swimming pool. The center of the school was an odd mishmash of zigzagging administrative buildings, the cafeteria, the library, and a massive auditorium. Sticking out of the north edge of the auditorium was a fifty-foot high clock tower. It was, for all intents and purposes, a very ugly school, but for now it was mine.