Joss the Seven

by J. Philip Horne

  Blending was straightforward. I was pretty much invisible, though Mara said a faint motion might show in someone’s peripheral vision if I moved too fast. Ghosting was another matter. She had me start by learning to sink into the floor a few inches. I had to sort of push into solids when ghosting. Not physically, but with my will. It was like my body knew it was unnatural to sink into the floor or step through walls.

  Once I ghosted down a couple inches into the floor, I could drift, a movement controlled by my will. The parts of me in a solid had no sensory input. No sights or sounds if my head was in a solid. I could drift in any direction, but going down all the way into the ground seemed scary. How would I know which way was up?

  Mara also combined my Seven training with my martial arts training. This was the only time she had me practice something other than ghosting and blending. She’d throw a punch or kick at me, and I had to ghost whatever part of my body she was about to strike. Then I was supposed to retaliate with a punch or kick, making my foot or hand rock hard to deliver a vicious blow. The flashing between talents, first ghosting my head, then bruising to make a hardened fist, was tiring and sometimes felt impossible.

  For six weeks we’d all trained, and I’d practiced ghosting and blending each day when at home to the point of exhaustion. I was so tired. For all of Thomas’ complaints, he only had the four hours at Battlehoop wearing him down. I did have one advantage. Every time I got sore or bruised I practiced my reggie talent.

  Mara had worked with me on that one as well. She emphasized the importance of reggying for everything immediately to build up the reggie auto-pilot. I wasn’t sure how long it would take, but it still took serious concentration to heal myself. Each day I recovered from any aches and pains at the cost of feeling even more tired. I’d never slept so much in my life. The other guys weren’t as tired, but they were sore and bruised.

  The other guys and Janey. I still couldn’t believe she’d stuck with it. And she hadn’t just survived— she was a natural. Coordinated and super-fast, Janey held her own with us boys in spite of being smaller and lighter. I’d never admit it to anyone, but I was proud of her. What a strange feeling.

  All of us guys would hang out after class sometimes. I was even getting used to hanging with Frankie. But we were always in a big group, or I was sneaking off by myself to practice ghosting and blending, and I hadn’t had much of a chance to talk to Thomas about the whole Seven thing. The weeks kept slipping by, and living a secret life of trying to learn to be a superhero was driving me nuts. I needed an outlet. I needed to talk to someone. Thomas was my only option. I had finally gotten him to invite me over for a sleepover.

  We were upstairs at his house. His mom had her bedroom and office downstairs and almost never came upstairs. Thomas had two bedrooms and a game room to himself.

  “Man, I wish you could reggie my arms,” Thomas said, stretching them one at a time across his chest. “Your talents are selfish, Joss. Just plain selfish.”

  “Six hundred dollars, and you’re calling me selfish?” I said. “I saw Jordan slip you the envelope today. Six weeks. Six hundred dollars.”

  “Well, okay, that’s true. There’s been some upside for me.”

  “Not just the money. We’re not going to have to take it next year. Any kids who mess with us are in for a surprise.”

  “That’s the truth,” Thomas said. “I mean, I know Jordan’s just giving a cover for you to train with Mara, but he’s good. I’m going to be good. Never thought I’d feel that way.”

  We sat for a moment, thinking. Thomas broke the silence. “Wish I’d felt this way in seventh grade. I hated seventh grade.”

  “Bobby Ferris,” I said.

  Thomas nodded. “Bobby Ferris.”

  Just thinking about Bobby made my head feel hot. I made a general rule of not saying his name.

  “Jerk had no right,” I said.

  “Yeah, but I still don’t think he meant to get your underwear when he pantsed you.”

  “Whatever. Doesn’t matter,” I said. “He did it, and he never paid. Shelly and her friends always looked at me funny after that.”

  Thomas nodded. “Big kid. He’ll be a sophomore when we go to high school. I bet he won’t look as big anymore.”

  “How could he?” I asked. “Spar with Jordan, everyone else looks smaller.”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  I jerked to my feet, a thought captivating me.

  “Bobby Ferris. Doesn’t he live just north, past Estes Street?”

  “Yeah,” Thomas said.

  “You know the house, right? Doesn’t your Mom hang out with that family next door?”

  “Yeah, the Walkers. We eat there sometimes. Mom and Mrs. Walker go way back. Dad was friends with Mr. Walker first, but, you know, not anymore. Not since…”

  Thomas trailed off. He didn’t like talking about his parents’ divorce.

  “Take me there,” I said.

  “Where? The Walkers’?”

  “Yeah. No. Bobby’s.”

  “What?” Thomas sat up straight. “Why?”

  “Take me to Bobby’s.” I smiled. “It’s payback time.”

  “It’s 10:30,” Thomas said. “10:30 is not payback time. It’s XBOX time. And then sleep time. I’m exhausted.”

  “Tell your mom we’re going to bed. And we will be, eventually. We shut down. Head out the window. Pay a visit to Bobby Ferris.”

  “Why? What are you going to do?”

  Thomas knew about my talents, but he hadn’t seen me using them recently. He didn’t know what I could do. I blended. Thomas gasped. He stood up and looked right at me, then around the room. I ghosted down into the floor a few inches so I could drift, a slow, silent motion. I ghosted into the couch, then drifted up through the couch until I was standing on the back of it. I let go of the ghost and blend, and tapped Thomas’ shoulder.

  “Dang!” he said as he whirled toward me, his eyes wide. “That is some freaky stuff. Didn’t realize you could do it that well.”

  “Yep.” I stepped down to the floor. “Just ghosting and blending.”

  “Wow, that’s scary.”

  “Yeah. They’ve had me focus everything on those two talents. I’m getting a little better at the other stuff cause I’m stronger overall, but Mara’s all about the ghosting and blending.”

  “Why?” Thomas asked.

  “Guess they need me to sneak somewhere, right?”

  “Yeah, makes sense.”

  “I need some lipstick,” I said. “Can you snag some when you talk to your mom? Red lipstick, okay?”

  “Hold on. What’s the plan?”

  I smiled. “I’m going to leave Bobby a message on his bathroom mirror written in red lipstick. Something so crazy it’s scary.”

  Thomas’ eyes got wider. “That’s insane. They’ll call the cops, Joss. Or—”

  “Or his parents will blame Bobby, even though he’ll be freaking out because he knows he didn’t do it.”

  “That’s wrong. Just wrong.”

  “But it was right for him to show my stuff to half the seventh grade girls?”

  “No,” Thomas said. He sat back down on the couch and rubbed his forehead. “But I don’t like it.”

  “Not asking you to like it,” I said. “Just need you take me to his house. Come on! He humiliated me! Go tell your mom we’re crashing. Snag some lipstick. She must have some in her purse.”

  “Alright,” Thomas said, “but this is on you.” He glared at me as he headed downstairs.

  Thomas and I stood in the deepest shadows of a large oak to the side of the Walkers’ house. It had been effortless to climb out Thomas’ bedroom window, cut across the roof, and drop ten feet to the ground. Maybe all that practice falling had been worth it. An easy fifteen-minute walk, and we were there.

  I pulled the lipstick out of my pocket. Thomas had done me right. It was bright red. Not that I could see the color right then. There were no street lights in this neighborhood. “I’m going in
. Back in ten.”

  I blended, and took off at a quick jog across the Walkers’ yard over to the Ferris house. It was one-story, and the porch light wasn’t on. Shadows clung to the eaves and shuttered windows along the front of the house. I faintly heard voices through the front door. What was that about? Sounded muffled, but loud. I ignored them.

  Time for Bobby to pay. He should have never messed with the Seventy-Seven. Maintaining the blend, I ghosted through the front door.

  Words assaulted me from up ahead. A deep, ugly voice yelled, “You good for nuttin’ piece of trash! Gonna take my bottle? Huh, tough guy?”

  My eyebrows came together. What was going on? I stepped forward with the careful ninja steps Jordan had taught us, past a living room to the left along the front side of the house. The entryway opened into a large family room.

  A man stood, swaying on his feet, a bottle held in his left hand. I could smell him from ten feet away. He stank of alcohol. Bobby Ferris faced him, his hands balled into fists, tears streaming down his face. The man pushed Bobby with his free hand, and staggered backwards. Bobby hadn’t moved.

  “Dad, please,” Bobby said. “Let’s just save some for tomorrow.”

  Bobby’s dad? My stomach lurched.

  Mr. Ferris roared incoherently. He stepped forward and took a wild swing at Bobby. Bobby took a quick step away from the blow, and Mr. Ferris overbalanced. He twisted around crashed down backwards onto the coffee table in front of the couch. The bottle fell from his hand to the floor, and a golden liquid leaked out onto the beige carpet.

  Bobby swooped down, righted the bottle, and stood, looking down at his dad. Mr. Ferris was out cold. Bobby stood there, his body trembling, crying. I was frozen in the horror of the moment, a witness to something I wished I could wipe from my memory.

  Bobby picked up his dad in a smooth motion and carried him toward a hall at the far end of the family room. Wow, Bobby was big. The kid had not stopped growing. His dad wasn’t tiny, but Bobby carried him like a child.

  I snuck along behind Bobby down the hall, still blending. Bobby nudged the last door on the right open with his shoulder and rotated his dad through the doorway. By the time I got to the door and looked in, Bobby was settling his dad on a large bed in the middle of a dark bedroom.

  I had seen enough. I’d seen too much. I didn’t bother with the hallway. I ghosted straight through the walls toward the front of the house, out the brick wall, and through the hedges. I ran back to the the tree where Thomas was waiting.

  Thomas jumped when I stopped blending.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said.

  “You do it?”

  “No. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Say what?” Thomas said. I ignored him and started walking. He caught up with me a moment later.

  “What happened?” Thomas asked.

  “I hate Bobby Ferris.”

  “Okay. I know. But what happened?”

  “What happened was, I hate Bobby Ferris,” I said. “I’ve hated him for so long I’m not sure I know how to not hate him.” A tear leaked out of my eye. I was so angry. So upset. I jerked my hand across my face to wipe the tear, but another one replaced it.

  Thomas walked beside me for a block without talking. It gave me a chance to pull myself together.

  “You saw something,” Thomas said.

  “Yeah.” We walked another block. “How do you not hate a guy who humiliated you in front of the whole school?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe you forgive them?”

  I ignored his comment. “How do you hate a guy who’s got a drunk, violent father?”

  “Oh,” Thomas said. “Was it bad?”

  “I guess not,” I said. “Only because Mr. Ferris passed out or something when he tried to punch Bobby.”

  “Yeah, that’s bad.”

  “How can I just forget about what he did to me?” I asked.

  “Because you want to be happier?”

  “I’m serious!”

  “I know,” Thomas said. “Look, I don’t think you just forget what he did. I think you start with forgiveness. I mean, I get it. You like your life. But you push. You’ve got stuff going on under the surface.”

  “So now I’m Shrek? I’ve got layers? Guess that makes you Donkey.”

  “Yeah, that’s me. Donkey.”

  We walked in silence the rest of the way back to Thomas’ house. There was a tree that had a branch right near the roofline. Thomas monkeyed up it with a practiced skill. I ghosted into the middle of the trunk and leaned forward so my head stuck out so I could see what I was doing. The few moments I had been completely in the trunk of the tree had been as bad as I had thought it would be. No sight. No sound. No sense of anything. Just a gentle, cool pressure.

  I drifted up the trunk to the the limb that extended over the roof, my head sticking out the whole way. Even in the faint light of the moon, I could see the whites of Thomas’ eyes as he stared at me from the roof.

  “That just looks so wrong,” he said. “I may hurl.”

  I drifted out of the trunk onto the branch, took two quick steps, and jumped to the roof beside Thomas. “Seventy-Seven for the win,” I said, and walked past him to the bedroom window. It didn’t feel like a win, though. I was the one who felt like I might hurl.

  I kept seeing Bobby crying as his dad swung a fist at him. Carrying his dad to the bedroom. Laying him, passed out, on his bed. Crying. His father yelling. I’d never seen anything like it before, and I felt violated. But I knew I wasn’t the one being violated, Bobby was. I felt angry. Helpless. Disgusted.

  I lay in my sleeping bag for a long time, alone with my thoughts. What was this all about? Who was I to try to take revenge on a kid who had a horrible life? What did that say about me? And why was I a Seven? So I could discover horrible facts about people I wanted to hate but pitied instead? What was the point?

  On Monday, I learned the answer to one of the questions. I found out why I was being trained as a Seven.

  Chapter 10

  ROBIN HOOD

  “WE NEED YOU to come online for your first mission.”

  Mara and I stood in the center room along the left side of the dojo. Unlike the room up front, which had office furniture, this room had only blue mats on the floor. All our individual training was done here.

  Mara faced me wearing black yoga pants and a dark green T-shirt that said, IRON BOOTS, IF THEY GET TOO HEAVY STICK THEM IN YOUR POCKET. She looked solemn, and she held a black laptop.

  “You like saying mysterious things, don’t you?” I asked. “Are we finally going after that Mocker?”

  She sat down cross-legged on the floor and held a hand out for me to do likewise. “We are. The Guild needs you to acquire some files from an office building downtown.”

  “Wait.” I sat down hard. “You want me to steal something? That’s what all this is about? You need a thief?”

  “No!” Mara said. “Well, yeah, if you want to think about it that way. Remember I told you, the first time we met, the Guild needed you? That a Mocker was looking for the Seven with a butterfly birthmark?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, the Mockers are like a crime syndicate. But they’ve started turning Sevens, using them. It’s bad news. We need info on the Mocker targeting you.” Mara didn’t look at me. Her eyes drifted toward the corners of the room.

  I had daydreamed what I would one day do for the Guild. Mostly, it involved being heroic. Saving people. That sort of thing. Not stealing. When I had pictured myself ghosting and blending through buildings, it had been to rescue kidnapped people. Usually very pretty girls, who would catch a glimpse of my face as I struggled through overwhelming odds.

  “Stealing,” I said. “What hero steals?”

  Mara sat back and bit her lower lip, her eyebrows pulled together. “Robin Hood?”

  “I was thinking more of superhero heroes.”

  Mara nodded. “I get that. Sometimes, Joss, you get forced into tough situati
ons to do what’s right. Welcome to the real world.”

  That sounded weak, but maybe that’s what it took to stop the bad guys. “So the Guild wants me to steal some files? From some criminal masterminds? You think I’m ready? To go up against these Mockers? I mean, I don’t even really know anything about them.”

  “Oh, yeah, you’ll do great.” Mara’s eyes locked onto mine. “The Mockers are bad news. Evil. We need to hit them when we can. Hit them hard.” Her eyes narrowed as she spoke.

  “And they are turning Sevens. What does that even mean?”

  Mara sighed. “It means they’re making Sevens commit crimes. Maybe they’re convincing the Sevens to work with them. Maybe they’re coercing them. But it’s all bad news, and it’s going to point back to the Guild.”

  “How can you point a finger at something nobody knows about?”

  “Oh, the Dirty Dozen knows about us.”

  “What. The. Heck,” I said. “The Dirty Dozen?”

  “It’s the Guild nickname for DOSN,” Mara said. “The Department of Seven Normalization. Look, skip all that. There’s tons for you still to learn. We haven’t even talked about silver yet. We’ve got work to do. We need to focus on the Mockers right now.”

  My mind spun. Crime syndicates. DOSN. And silver? It was too much. I needed to zero in on something smaller, more manageable, before my head exploded. I took a deep breath, and focused on the mission.

  “So do the Mockers have, I don’t know, a hide-out here in town?”

  “No, nothing like that,” Mara said. “Each Mocker has their own operation. They pay a percent back to the central organization, and get access to shared intel in return. You can’t really take the Mockers down. You take them down one Mocker at a time.”

  “So I steal some files, and it helps take down the Mocker looking for me. What’s his name?”

  “Honestly? I don’t know.”

  I frowned. “You said there’s a Mocker hunting me, right? Well, not me, but the butterfly birthmark.”