Shards

by F. J. R. Titchenell

  “No Haley?” I asked. I’d assumed she’d be there if she wasn’t with Aldo and me, especially if Kevin was here.

  “She said she had some kind of project,” Ben said in his normal voice, but quieter. “So, really, what are you doing here?”

  “I came to remind you to check your email,” I said.

  “What? I checked ten minutes ago.” But he was already hurrying through his phone, expecting to find a new disaster there. He stopped at the message I’d just sent, with the subject line ‘The Need-to-Know-Newsletter’, and I had to prod him.

  “Open it.”

  He scanned it with wide eyes. “This is . . . a lot.”

  “The first of many,” I told him. “I’m thinking once a week to the whole Network unless something major comes up.”

  Kevin warily pulled out his own phone to check his copy.

  “It started with the information I promised Courtney, and I thought, if I’m giving it to someone as unverified as she is, there’s really no reason not to give it to the rest of you,” I explained. “And then I thought, if I’m putting that in an email, there are some other things that are just as important and not that much more dangerous to the cause, like the lists. That’s what made me think of weekly updates because the lists are always changing, I mean, they’ve already changed a lot since the last time we handed them out, and keeping them up to date will help everyone keep themselves safe.”

  I didn’t blame Ben for being speechless. I’d been speechless when I’d realized I was even considering this. “It’s still risky. In the wrong hands, this could tell them exactly whom to use against us.” I didn’t like this next part, but I said it anyway. “Courtney said my definition of need-to-know was too narrow. You’ve been saying . . .” I stopped trying to explain how hard I was trying to accept, even celebrate this dangerous, yet liberating, idea of working with friends. “After a lot of careful consideration, I’m starting to think you may both have been right.”

  “I think it’s a great idea,” said Ben, but there was some distraction to his excitement. I could guess by his look as much as the color of the screen’s reflection off his eyes that he’d scrolled back up to the newsletter’s top story, the Splinter Council meeting place we’d narrowed down from Alexei’s GPS data. “Foxfire Collectibles?” he read. “Your dad’s shop?”

  “I’d call it ninety-eight percent certain,” Aldo told him. “Alexei and Sam were both there while we were patching up Haley.”

  “It explains why I could never pinpoint any suspicious locations from my dad’s car alone,” I said.

  “This all sounds terribly important and interesting,” Mr. Finn cut in, “but are you kids going to pull your weight, or are you going to spend the whole hour talking in cryptic whispers?”

  Ben looked back at me, and his face had those tense corners it gets when he’s about to try to ask one thing by asking something else. He held up the phone.

  “Was this all you wanted to talk about?”

  I had to guess that I was answering the other question correctly, not just losing him valuable points at his one lunchtime harbor, when I pulled out the new deck of cards I’d bought the day before on yet another circuitous and solitary walk home.

  “Actually, Aldo and I were just going over the rules of five-card draw, and I couldn’t quite explain all the subtleties the way you can. He’s pretty convinced he could beat us both.”

  Aldo rolled his eyes, but didn’t argue with me.

  Ben gave Mr. Finn a look that might have qualified as pleading.

  Mr. Finn sighed. “Your loss. The kind of guy who commissions an authentic fifteenth-century catapult for his wedding can usually be counted on to spare no expense.”

  I didn’t think I’d ever seen Ben smile so much in such a short space of time. “Thanks.”

  Kevin joined us to form a circle on the cleanest section of floor, and soon the four of us were arguing over the somewhat subjective denominations of the crumbling wood chips we’d gathered to gamble with, shouting our bets over the swells of noise from the buzz saw, then shushing each other whenever Mr. Finn turned it off.

  Ben and Aldo seemed to derive a great deal of enjoyment from heckling each other over every single betting round, and Ben and Kevin kept conferring with each other, analyzing Aldo and me for tells—as if Ben hadn’t spent the summer before the Warehouse incident accusing Kevin of being a Splinter because of some messy issue involving Haley’s attention that, as far as I could tell, still hadn’t entirely been resolved after her rescue.

  When I was dealing, Kevin even asked me for cards as if he found me just barely uncomfortable to look at.

  As if I weren’t the reason his brother was dead. As if we hadn’t had to mourn him awkwardly alone together while the rest of the town had still been calling him “missing.” As if I hadn’t forced the unwelcome knowledge of Splinters into his life. As if he’d never run away.

  It was almost as if none of us ever had.

  The only problem was the one I always had when playing cards with Ben, the way it somehow allowed time to slip away from me. The whole hour passed in what I could have sworn was only half that.

  Ben and I had our next classes in the same direction, so we had to make some quick arrangements for our exit.

  “I’ll go south first,” I offered, “when we storm off in opposite directions. I can loop around the east corridor.”

  “Okay,” Ben agreed. “Crap. I forgot.”

  “What?”

  “We might need to work on our act, some stuff other than running separate ways.”

  “What stuff?” I thought I’d been acting natural enough in the mock extension of our feud, but there was always the chance that I’d missed some critical detail, something someone like Ben could spot from across a crowded hallway but that I’d need embarrassing amounts of practice to get right.

  “My mom wants to have you and Haley and your parents over for Thanksgiving dinner,” Ben said almost apologetically, “to thank the families that got us settled. Basically to prove that we can get along with someone around here. I think your mom already accepted.”

  Of course she had. It would look unwelcoming not to. I even felt a brief, absurd flicker of hope that she’d done it partly to annoy Dad.

  “So, when your mom’s watching,” I whispered my guess, “we’re three inseparable best friends, heartstring-tugging enough to make keeping us together worth all the broken windows and car keyings Prospero can throw at her, so she doesn’t get herself and you killed trying to escape. But when she’s not watching, and my dad is, we can barely keep from strangling each other, let alone keep up the selfless charade we’ve concocted for your mother’s safety, and we’re certainly not in any shape to pose a threat to the Splinters together, so there’s no need for them to do anything more drastic to you than they have.”

  “Sounds about right,” Ben agreed.

  “Glad I didn’t help ‘settle’ you,” said Aldo, still smirking. “Makes Thanksgiving at my place sound almost relaxing.”

  Kevin clapped Ben and me on the back before shifting to Ben’s side of the doorway, ready to storm off his way. “Might want to ask Haley for some pointers,” he said.

  Mr. Finn couldn’t have heard the whole exchange, but he waved us off with a sigh of, “Oh, the drama, the deception, the intrigue. You know, sometimes I miss high school.”

  “Ready?” asked Ben.

  In answer, I opened the door to let Aldo through first and then slammed it back before Ben could follow us.

  Ben ran out a few steps behind, clutching his elbow much more dramatically than the sound of the door hitting it had warranted, Kevin watching with convincing concern from a safe distance.

  “You know, for a genius, you really suck at rational discussions!” Ben shouted.

  “Just because you couldn’t infer a valid conclusion to an Aristotelian syllogism to save your life!”

  “Freak!”

  “Traitor!”

  “Spaz!”
>
  “Sellout!”

  I wished as soon as we were out of sight of each other that I’d asked for the shorter route after all.

  I had to duck into a bathroom on the way to class to wait until I could stop smiling.

  22.

  Thanksgiving

  Ben

  “You can do this.”

  “I know.”

  “You’ve done it before.”

  “I know.”

  “Then why are you having so much trouble?”

  I wished I had a good answer for that. “Look, it’s been a while, all right?”

  Haley looked at me in the mirror and smiled. “You’ve fought a Splinter deer, beaten a Shard with a tree branch, and broken into the Warehouse to rescue me, and you have a hard time tying a tie?”

  “Mankind has never created a more oppressive garment,” I muttered.

  Haley did not look amused. “Try wearing women’s clothing sometime. Then we’ll talk.”

  “Point,” I said as I untied the knot I’d managed to fumble my way into and went back to square one. Haley smiled again. She wore a nice dress of autumn colors and had her hair tied back with a bow. As usual, she looked beautiful, a fact made more uncomfortable by her insistence on wrapping her arms around my neck as she helped me with the tie.

  “How bad do you think this is going to be?” Haley asked.

  That was a good question. Having Mina around other people was always a risky proposition, and having her parents around with her—one of them a Splinter collaborator, the other a leader of the Splinters who was personally responsible for ruining my life—had the potential to be a really unstable situation.

  “It could be bad. It could also be perfectly pleasant. Splinters are good at playing nice,” I said.

  “And you’ll be okay with that?” she asked.

  I scowled. “I’ll play nice if they play nice. What about you?”

  Her smile faltered, briefly, but she quickly recovered and looked as happy as ever. “I’m a good actress.”

  Looking at that smile, I believed her. You could hardly tell that she hated Splinters as much as, possibly even more than, Mina.

  I tried to find some silver lining. “Well, at least there’s gonna be good food.”

  “Better than usual,” Haley said, her fingers nimbly fixing my tie into something presentable.

  “Oh?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Most years since Dad left, it’s just been turkey sandwiches and cranberry juice on Thanksgiving. My mom’s never been the most imaginative cook.”

  I laughed. “My mom’s the exact opposite. Old Wisconsin farm family. I always thought Thanksgiving was supposed to be one of those family sorts of things, you know? I mean, after she moved away from her folks, Mom never really liked making it about the big family thing, she tried to keep it between the three of us, and the two of us after Dad died, but she always used to cook enough food for ten people. It was one of those things to look forward to, and it was never something I thought I’d have to share with . . .”

  “The enemy?” Haley said.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s not going to be easy for any of us,” Haley said.

  “Except your mom. And my mom. At least they get to be blissfully ignorant,” I said.

  “Should they be?” Haley asked, finishing my tie. “Perfect.”

  “They have to be in the dark,” I said, turning to face her.

  “Why?”

  “Because the more they know, the more danger they’re in,” I said.

  “They’re in danger simply by being related to us. If the Splinters think they can use our moms against us, they will. So why not tell them?” Haley said.

  “Because . . .” I didn’t want to say it was because I didn’t think my mother could handle it. Aunt Christine was tough. She might be able to handle it if we told her honestly, maybe providing some proof.

  “Because they’ll think we’re crazy. I think this is something that they’d have to see firsthand in order to believe. It took a lot for me to believe, in the beginning,” I said.

  Haley sighed. “This sucks.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said.

  The doorbell rang downstairs.

  “Ben, honey, can you get that? We’re a little busy in here!” Mom called from the kitchen.

  “I got it!” I called back. I looked at Haley. “Are you ready?”

  “As ready as I’ll ever be,” she said, giving a light twirl on her feet. “Am I presentable?”

  “Very. Me?” I asked, pulling on my dad’s old sport coat.

  “Dashing,” she said. I held out my arm theatrically, and she took it in kind, her hand trembling very slightly. I hoped that she wouldn’t feel how nervous I was, too.

  “To dinner with the enemy!” I proclaimed loudly, getting one last laugh out of her before we went downstairs.

  To be fair, we were able to stay on our best behavior for close to an hour.

  That was a lot better than I was expecting.

  Haley and I let the Todds in, playing gracious hosts, showing Mina, her mother and her father around and introducing them to our respective moms (though, being a small town, they all knew each other anyway). Mina had told me that her mom wasn’t a particularly good cook, and the store-bought pumpkin pie she carried in proved that theory. She tried to make up for it with a few bottles of wine for the adults and sparkling cider for the rest of us. My mom couldn’t tell one type of wine from another for the life of her, let alone pronounce the name of the vineyard the bottles came from, but she took them gratefully, cracking one of them open and sharing it with Aunt Christine and Mina’s mom. They stayed in the kitchen talking, even laughing some. I didn’t know if that was a good thing or not.

  I didn’t know what to make of Mina’s mom. On the one hand, she was a collaborator on the town council who actively worked with the Splinters to help keep their presence hidden. On the other hand, she had nearly divorced Mina’s dad after finding out that he’d snuck a Splinter into the town council, and she looked at him as if she could barely stand him. She didn’t strike me as a friend, not with her cold demeanor and calculated appearance of friendliness in front of the other moms, but she didn’t strike me as an enemy either. That would have to do.

  With them out of the way, Haley and I were forced to give Mina and her dad the grand tour of my house, not that it was particularly necessary since they had known the previous owners. Haley and I kept up our act pretty well, doing our best to ignore Mina while I answered whatever inane questions her dad had about what plans we had for the place, as if he weren’t my jailer and the architect responsible for my social shaming in Prospero.

  I had to remind myself that soon we might have some leverage of our own to even the playing field. I knew Mina had to be thinking the same thing. She seemed focused on some far-off place, probably uncomfortable in the colorful dress and sweater her mother forced upon her, keeping a careful cold shoulder to us both. Haley was having a harder time. It was hardly visible, but I could tell she was already struggling to restrain herself.

  Finally, Aunt Christine called us back in, saying that dinner was almost ready. We came back inside and took our seats at the dining room table. Soon enough the moms came out of the kitchen carrying large dishes of vegetables, mashed potatoes, yams, and corn bread. My mom apologized for the turkey, saying it would still need more time in the oven.

  Time to be friendly with Mina.

  Mr. Todd led dinner with a brief prayer, thanking God for his family, friends, and the life he’d been allowed to lead. The life he’d stolen. I bit my tongue. Haley bit hers. Mina looked pretty used to this. Once he had finished, to the approval of my mom and Aunt Christine, we dug in to the first dishes on the table.

  Like most holiday meals I’d attended, most of the early conversations were separated between the parents and the kids. Mom was asked about moving in and her job in Town Hall, Aunt Christine about school and her new boyfriend (apparently it had caused quite the
scandal when she’d broken up with the school counselor, Mr. Montresor), and Mina’s parents about the various goings-on in Prospero. Mina, Haley, and I couldn’t talk about anything honestly, so we made a good show of talking about school. I told them about building furniture with Mr. Finn, and Haley spoke of the school’s upcoming Winter Holiday Showcase as if she was looking forward to it more than anything in the world.

  I almost started to think we’d be able to pull this off without incident.

  Then Mr. Todd turned his attention to me.

  “So, Ben, I haven’t really seen you around the shop recently,” he said, pleasant as ever.

  “I haven’t really had the time,” I said.

  “School, huh?” he said, smiling.

  I smiled back, trying to hold the venom at bay. “You could say that, yes.”

  My mom stepped in. “It’s been a rough adjustment, moving here, but I think we’re finally getting settled in.”

  I nodded in agreement. Mr. Todd smiled, stroking his beard. “Really glad to hear that. I mean, people just have this way of spreading some real mean rumors sometimes. When I hear them talking about you, I just up and say, ‘Ben Pastor? I think you must be mistaken. He’s a good boy if I’ve ever seen one. He’d never get in trouble.’”

  “Thank you for your vote of confidence,” I said, gripping the tablecloth tightly. I wasn’t the only one. Haley looked about two steps away from jumping over the table and throttling him. Mrs. Todd simply downed the rest of her wine glass and poured a new one.

  “Don’t mention it, Ben. You’ve got people who believe in you, real friends out here, all you have to do is ask for our help and we’ll be there for you,” he said with a smile. I couldn’t believe his arrogance, the audacity of asking me to surrender, in front of my mother and friends on Thanksgiving!

  “That’s real sweet of you,” my mom said, smiling. “I keep trying to tell Ben that he’s not alone here, but he doesn’t want to listen.”