by Matt Carter
I’d crossed Haley Perkins off the Probable Non-Splinters list when she’d gone missing, and she hadn’t been anywhere since then. Suddenly, she needed a place again.
I selected a Java Monster from the case of assorted energy drinks in my closet, turned on the computer monitor, selected a playlist, and turned to a fresh Sudoku page to clear my head.
One, four, eight . . .
“I am the very model of a modern Major-General . . .”
All the nicely ordered thoughts crowded Haley securely into the part of my brain where I could handle her, like packing peanuts.
Two, three, nine . . .
Haley had been missing for two months. Like everyone else, I’d thought she was almost certainly dead.
I’d even started to consider the possibility that she was just the ordinary kind of missing person, left in a shallow grave somewhere by some depraved human, and the fact that she’d happened to disappear from Prospero was just a wild coincidence.
As unpleasant as that option was, I’d hoped, for her sake, that it was true.
Haley and I had never exactly been close. She had been popular, forever absorbed in some social function or event, surrounded by questionable people.
But she had never been unkind to me, and that was more than I could say for most of the Prospero High student body. I was quite sure she was intelligent, if a little naïve, and a far greater talent than the school’s Theatrical Society knew what to do with.
As the weeks had passed with no sign of her, I had sincerely wished her the dignity of death.
Seven, nine, two, five, six, one, eight, four, three
vertical . . .
I penciled her name onto the Probable Splinters list. It’s one of the longer ones, but I gave hers a double asterisk so it wouldn’t get lost.
“And many cheerful facts about the square of the
hypotenuse . . .”
I didn’t like the idea of my potential new ally living under the same roof with someone on that list, but I wasn’t ready to write him off just for that. Ben was the most promising prospect I’d found in a long time. I’d picked apart every tweet and status update from both his family and the Perkinses for the past five years, every signature in the museum guestbook that every visitor had to sign, every page of the set of Haley’s yearbooks that had been on solemn display in front of the school since her disappearance, until I couldn’t find any reasonable way he could have been in Prospero recently enough for it to be a problem.
His local and school newspapers had never reported any miracles connected with him, or anything remarkable about him at all, unless you counted taking AP World History or announcing his Eagle Scout project a year early, and I hadn’t been able to identify any unexplained contact between him and any of the Effectively Certain or Probable Splinters.
He’d been living under uncertain circumstances all his life, ever since leaving his childhood home in Wisconsin after his father’s death, and he had remained strong.
I can’t overemphasize the importance of that. What I do isn’t easy.
He already knew the Perkinses and was likely to want answers about what had happened to Haley. He wasn’t going to be in Prospero permanently, so once I’d taught him the basics, I could send him on his way to safety, to research, consult, and preserve the knowledge from afar, without my having to watch him every second to ensure his continuing humanity.
“And whistle all the airs from that infernal nonsense, ‘Pinafore . . .’”
It was going to take—
“Sweetie, are you down there?”
My brain jammed up completely, the way it always did whenever I heard that voice on the stairs going down to my basement bedroom. It makes me feel like I’ve been thinking out loud, and that shuts me up fast.
“Yes,” I called back.
“I just warmed up some pizza bagels! I know it’s not exactly post-funeral food, but since it wasn’t exactly a funeral—”
“No, thank you, Dad.”
“Are you sure?”
“No, thank you, Dad,” I repeated.
I clicked the pause button so I could listen to him backing away into the living room. Once he had gone, and my head churned back into motion, I didn’t start the music back up—I was functional enough. Instead, I checked my daily download of the important times and places. It had almost finished. I selected the clip of my mother’s meeting from the previous morning, adjusted the volume a little so that if anything important had been said, it would catch my ear, and opened Skype. As usual, Aldo was online.
Aldo’s one of the longest standing names on the Effectively Certain Non-Splinter List and one of the most useful. He’s a tech genius, and his dad runs the one computer repair shop in town.
He also has a sizeable crush on me. I know this because I’ve been informed by multiple sources, on separate occasions, all with strong track records of detecting such things and with no likely shared ulterior motives. I’ve asked him repeatedly if this has any significant chance of interfering with our work under any conceivable set of circumstances. He refuses to acknowledge the issue but he assures me that, if it were the case, it wouldn’t be a problem.
“Did you hear the news?” I asked him.
His face appeared onscreen. Every time I saw it, I expected to see his first pimples finally standing out. I don’t know any other fourteen-year-olds who’ve avoided them, at least none who like chili cheese fries so much and showers so little—but, like the promised growth spurt that still had not come and the baby-fine white-blond hair he could never find the time to trim, his skin made him look even younger than he really was.
“About Haley Perkins going Romero on us?”
“Going what?” I waited, as usual, for Aldo to translate, wondering if he’d ever stop making me ask.
“Returning from the dead. And no, I didn’t hear. I decided to spend a nice afternoon in my NASA-grade isolation chamber.”
“It’s not Haley Perkins,” I reminded him. There are few enough people I can talk to about these things. I don’t like not knowing that we’re clear on them.
“Effectively certainly not,” Aldo agreed in the tone he thought I hadn’t identified as mocking yet. “What are you listening to?”
I could see him squinting to listen to the recording playing faintly on my end. It had taken me forever to figure out why he did that, act as if his eyes and ears ran through the same temperamental fuse box. I think his brain doesn’t need as many packing peanuts as mine.
I saved him the trouble. “Council meeting.”
“You’re still listening to the ones at Town Hall?”
Aldo had made so many bugs for me that he tended to forget that I didn’t always lose interest in them as soon as he had moved on to his next project.
“The Council’s involved, even if they don’t talk about it explicitly,” I insisted for the sixty-seventh time. That’s a precise count. “But they’re not the richest source,” I agreed. “I’m going to need some more. Something I can fit in—”
My phone vibrated in my pocket, and I pulled it out.
Restricted.
I’ve only seen that a few times before. People in Prospero don’t have restricted numbers. It’s seen as unfriendly. I held up a finger to ask Aldo to wait and answered the call.
“Ben?” I asked.
The voice that answered wasn’t his. It wasn’t even really a voice. It’s what Splinters sound like when they don’t want to be recognized, a clicking, popping, rasp. I’d only heard it a few times before, on the same occasions when I’d seen a number show up restricted. It made my stomach clench, but this time I was ready enough to hit speaker phone.
“Stay away from Ben Pastor,” it said before I could hold the phone to the computer mic and find the right record button. Luckily, it said it again.
“Stay away from Ben Pastor, or history will repeat itself.”
“Who is this?” I asked. Not that I expected them to answer. They never had before.
&nb
sp; “Stay away from Ben Pastor. He belongs to us.”
Then the call ended. Aldo stared at me out of my screen, waiting for me to say something.
“They’re after him,” I said, even though that was obvious. “Warning him isn’t going to be enough. I need a link to his GPS.”
“Uh . . . yeah,” Aldo gave me one of his awkward, sympathetic smiles that I dreaded. “Did you happen to catch his account number, PIN, last four of his social, and the name of his first pet?”
3.
Perks of Being a (Local) Hero
Ben
We were only supposed to be in Prospero for another two days after the memorial service.
One week later we were still taking up two of Aunt Christine’s guestrooms. Mom had already called her office saying that she would need to take an indeterminate amount of time off due to a family emergency. She said they were okay with it. I didn’t entirely believe her.
Same old, same old, really.
I’ll say this, though: if you’re going to be stuck somewhere, and you don’t know how long you’re going to be stuck, it helps to be a local hero.
Those first few days were just one long stretch of people coming in and out of the house, dropping off congratulations and more baked goods than I imagined were possible. Some of them were even good. Since Mom spent most of her time with Aunt Christine, and Aunt Christine spent most of her time at the medical center with Haley as she recuperated, I was pretty much left to my own devices. For the first few days, I hung around the house, taking in gifts and messages for Haley from well-wishers, chatting online, or reading by the pool.
Three days of this kind of nothing will give you a case of cabin fever quick. And so, as much as the town weirded me out, I began to wander.
At first it was strange when people on the street would thank me and congratulate me for saving Haley, especially given how little attention her disappearance had gotten in the media. After the first few handshakes though, it started to feel pretty awesome. Especially when they started giving me free stuff. The diner cook at The Soda Fountain of Youth, this burned-out surfer dude with a grin on his face that said he never graduated high school and a pair of drumsticks jammed in his belt, gave me a bacon cheeseburger and fries on the house.
BILLY, his ketchup-splattered nametag read.
“The world doesn’t have enough cute cheerleaders in it. Good on you for saving one of the last of ‘em, Superman,” he said.
I tried to pay for it, I really did, but he wouldn’t let me. The same thing happened later when the guy who ran the hobby shop, Foxfire Collectibles, sent me on my way with a model kit for a P51 Mustang and some comic books. And when I stuck my head in The Prospero Museum of Unnatural History just to see what it was like, they wouldn’t let me leave until I’d signed their guestbook and taken a complimentary t-shirt. I grabbed “PROSPERO—PROUD HOME OF ‘THE HOOK!’” with a picture of a metal hook hanging from a car door. Compared to the other t-shirts of urban legends that Prospero claimed to be the “Proud Home of,” it seemed the most benign.
The attention was fun while it lasted. I won’t try and be noble and say I had to suffer through it, though, when I heard that they were finally going to release Haley from the medical center, I was glad to pass the torch. She was the survivor; she deserved the attention.
According to my mom, Haley barely remembered what had happened to her. The best the police could figure, she had sleepwalked out of her room and had probably gotten lost in the nearby woods. She survived off of whatever she could find, probably finding an abandoned hermit’s shack—if the blanket was any indication—before wandering back to town. They said it was a miracle, but they sounded unsurprised.
After all, Prospero’s supposed to be a town of miracles.
The night she was released from the medical center, we all went out to dinner at The Grey Lodge, which was the nicest restaurant in town by default since they served steaks and were known to have lobster on occasion. While I wouldn’t exactly call a place with faux-log cabin walls covered in taxidermy animal heads and what I’m guessing was nineteenth century brothel art fancy, it did have pretty decent food.
Of course, since Haley was the latest town miracle, what felt like the entire town showed up to join us.
The week in the med center had done wonders for her. Though she was still underweight and had some odd cuts and bruises, she looked less skeletal than she had when I first found her and had a nice glow whenever she smiled. Wearing a new sundress, she was actually quite pretty. Though a little jumpy, she did keep a pleasant smile on as she talked with everyone who came to see her. Every so often she would shoot a nervous glance my way, as if asking me if I’d been getting the same treatment. I would respond with a slight shrug of confirmation.
With a line of people trying to catch her attention, I guess I should have figured that those who couldn’t reach her would come to me instead.
On my way back from the bathroom, a powerful arm wrapped around my shoulder and pulled me off to the side. The arm belonged to a short, wiry, middle-aged man with a mane of greasy black hair that fell below his shoulders and a pale, perpetually uncomfortable-looking face, who looked up at me with a smile that lacked any trace of sincerity. Even if he hadn’t been wearing sunglasses at night, his breath loudly proclaimed that he had been drinking heavily recently.
“Oh, hello!” he said in a thick, strange accent. His vowels all stretched out too long for me to guess exactly where he was from. “You are the hero boy? That is so fantastic! How are you? I am Alexei Smith, the drama teacher. Please, let me buy you a drink!”
“I’m sixteen,” I said. I tried to get out from underneath his arm, but he was surprisingly strong for his size.
“Oh, that is too bad! I used to be sixteen once! Haley is such a gifted and beautiful girl, I was afraid when she was gone that she would not audition for my show!”
I took the bait, “What show is that?
“My Youth Shakespeare program show! We do it in the park at the end of every summer. This year is Titus Andronicus, it will be a laughing riot! She is a good actress, one of my best, I think. It would not be complete without her there. You should try out, too. Very handsome you are; you must be a great actor!”
He twitched faintly, darting his head to the side and whipping me in the face with his hair. He then looked at me with an apologetic smirk.
“I am sorry. I must flee so I can talk to a man about a mustache!” He laughed.
I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I just said, “Well, I hope that goes well.”
“That’s the idea!” He laughed as he wandered away into the crowd.
“Welcome to Prospero,” I muttered to myself. Before I was certain whether I meant that as a joke or an insult, another hand grabbed me by the wrist.
It was Haley. She looked up at me with a forced smile.
Through her teeth, she said, “Please, get me out of here.”
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“I won’t be if another person asks me that exact same question,” she said. “I’m tired of everyone wanting to talk to me. I just want to go home. Is that too much to ask?”
“No. No, it isn’t,” I replied. Relief flooded her face as she dragged me back to our table.
“Mom?” she said, “I’m getting real tired. Do you think it’d be okay if Ben and I walked home now?”
Concern flooded Aunt Christine’s face. “I’ll get the car ready.”
“No!” Haley cried. Catching herself in the outburst, she put a hand to her chest and giggled. “What I mean is, I’ve been cooped up in that med center room for so long, I could just use some fresh air.”
Her mother looked skeptical; I couldn’t blame her. Haley had had quite a bit of fresh air recently.
Looking desperate, Haley took my hand in hers. “I just need to be out, and I’d like a minute to thank Ben for saving my life. I know if he’s there with me, nothing bad can happen.”
She was laying it o
n pretty thick, but her mother bought it readily enough. She smiled knowingly at both of us before waving us on our way through the crowd.
When we stepped outside, she let go of my hand. She smiled as she twirled around daintily, enjoying her freedom.
“Thank you, for that,” she said.
“No problem,” I replied.
“I’m just sick and tired of people asking me how I’m doing, telling me I can talk to them if I need someone to talk to, or asking me what happened while I was missing,” she said.
Putting my hands in my pockets, I laughed a bit, “Well, since I was gonna ask you the first and third things you mentioned, I guess it’ll be a pretty quiet walk.”
She laughed, “Well, at least it’s a short walk.”
The house was only five blocks away. She was a bit unsteady on her feet. I had to catch her once by the elbow, balancing her. This time her smile was real.
“Thanks,” she said. She looked at me, biting her lip. “So . . . the second thing?”
“Only if you want to,” I said. “I’ve been told I’m easy to talk to, so if you want to, the offer’s there. If you don’t want to, that’s cool, too.”
She wrapped her arms around herself protectively and said nothing. There was laughter up ahead. I could see a few men standing by a car under a light across the street, talking and drinking. As we walked around a fire hydrant on the edge of the narrow sidewalk, I made sure to switch sides with Haley so I was closer to the men. Just in case.
When she dropped her arms, she snapped with a ferocity I did not know she had in her.
“I’m tired of people telling me what happened. They’re just guessing, they’re just trying to put together a picture that fits in a situation that doesn’t so they can move on. There are two months of my life missing. I missed the last month of my sophomore year of high school, and nobody seems to care. It’s all just, ‘Well, we’re glad you’re back. Now let’s pretend nothing happened and get on with our lives.’ I get the feeling that nobody wants to know what happened to me. They don’t want to know if I was kidnapped, or if I was crazy, or if . . .”
