by W. J. May
But he needed her advice all the same.
There were very few people in the world that he sincerely trusted. Jason, Argyle, a rare handful of the Guilder staff. At this point, he’d even have to include Tristan. But Beth? She was top of the list.
“About the isolation?” she asked. “All those questions you have?”
He nodded.
She’d hesitated for a moment, chewing thoughtfully on her bottom lip before squeezing his hand with a small smile. “Without knowing anything about the situation, at least until I get the full run-down at this dance, I’d just have to say…I bet you’re not as isolated as you think.”
Simon’s eyes tightened thoughtfully as they zeroed in on her. “What do you mean?”
“If things are truly as strange as you say they are…you’re probably not the only one out there with questions.” She squeezed his hand again. “Find those people, Simon. Do something about it.” Her hair swished in the air between them as she leaned in and gave him a quick kiss. “No need for you to be all alone.”
Then she was over the fence and gone. Leaving Simon blinking in her wake.
Of course she’s right, he thought to himself as he pulled on his jacket the next morning and searched around for his shoes. I should have seen it before myself. Jacob, Tristan, Argyle…they all see that Guilder’s not quite as perfect as it makes itself out to be. They all know that there’s a lot more going on than meets the eye. And I bet they’re not the only ones who think so…
With a look of fierce determination, he stuffed his keys in his pocket and moved out into the hall. Yes! There were others out there. He’d just have to find them.
And I happen to be heading towards one of them right now.
As had become his custom, the first stop that Simon made in the morning was at Jacob Decker’s dorm. He still hadn’t been able to talk to him since the attack in the Oratory, and had become rather stalker-ish in his attempts to do so. He’d made it a habit to show up at odd hours, hoping to catch Jacob by surprise and corner him into an unwilling conversation.
But surprising a psychic was easier said than done, and he’d had no luck thus far.
As he knocked on the door that morning, he didn’t really expect an answer. He waited outside for a cursory minute before heading off to his morning class. He’d figure out a way to get Jacob on board later.
For now… there were plenty of other people he was ready to recruit.
* * *
“Tristan! Hey—Tris!” Simon started calling the second he saw a head of golden-brown hair weaving through the crowd from the other side of the hall. Tristan’s eyes flashed up for a brief moment, then they dropped pointedly down to the books cradled in his arm. He wasn’t going to let himself get pulled into a conversation any more than Jacob was. Unfortunately, Simon was riding high on a wave of unrelenting adrenaline today, and Tristan had made the mistake of allowing himself to be seen. “Hey!” he called again, but Tristan walked right past him.
No matter. Simon hadn’t been given all these powers for nothing, right?
With all the gravitas of a seasoned spy, he breezed into an empty classroom two doors ahead of them. As Tristan walked past, he grabbed him by the arm and tried to yank him inside.
Except…that didn’t quite happen.
Tristan’s eyebrows cocked sarcastically as both boys looked down at his arm. Despite Simon’s best attempt, he hadn’t moved an inch. “Really?”
Simon blinked. In his fits of enthusiasm, he sometimes forgot that other people there happened to have powers, too.
That’s alright. I’ll just even out the playing field.
Just as the telltale burn laced up his skin, Tristan tried to jerk back in dismay.
“Oh, come on—”
But it was too late. He was already inside.
Simon released his arm and slammed the door shut in a single movement—grinning with unchecked enthusiasm. “Good morning.”
Tristan scowled. “Morning. Can I go now?”
He tried to move past, but Simon casually shifted to block his way. “Actually, I was wondering if you and some of the guys wanted to get together after school today. Maybe go into town? There’s this great fish and chips place I found with Jason—”
“Are you kidding me?” For the first time, a flicker of genuine anger broke through Tristan’s frustration. “You want me to go into the city? Today?”
There was a weighty pause, and Simon’s face flushed with embarrassment as he realized his obvious mistake. “Oh…right. You have your thing with Masters after class.”
Tristan’s eyes flashed. “If by ‘my thing with Masters’ you mean my meeting with the headmaster to discuss the permanent mark being placed on my record, then, yeah. That.”
Simon lowered his eyes to the floor. “Tristan, I’m really sorry—”
“You know, I don’t even know why I bothered,” Tristan retorted. “Why the hell I went there in the first place, let alone sticking my neck out to cover for your ass.”
“Then why did you?” Simon looked up with sudden feeling.
As poorly-timed as it might be, this was exactly the sort of thing Beth had been talking about. It wasn’t an overabundance of concern for Simon that had convinced Tristan to come along; it was a genuine curiosity. A recognition of certain universal inconsistencies that made him feel the need to see what happened in Rockford for himself.
Of course, covering for Simon when it was all done was an act of sheer selflessness. But it was that curiosity that Simon was banking on.
Tristan paused, thrown a little off-balance by the directness of the question. “I…I don’t…” A hint of that same angry frustration crept back into his eyes as he scowled at the floor. It was clearly a question he’d asked himself many times before, each time coming up blank. “I shouldn’t have,” he finally said, staring coldly at Simon. “Since you and I started hanging out, I’ve almost drowned, almost got shot, almost got my arm ripped off—twice—and now I’m heading off for detention with Masters himself. I shouldn’t have anything to do with you.” He glared at Simon.
“Then why do you?” Simon countered fiercely, pushing him relentlessly towards the ledge Simon himself had already jumped over. “Why did you come with me to Rockford?”
“I felt sorry for you.”
“No, you didn’t.” Simon shook his head. “You’re a good guy, Tristan, I have to give you that. But you didn’t go all the way to Rockford because you felt sorry for me.”
The bell rang and Tristan tried pushing past him again. “Simon, we’ve got to go. I can’t be late—”
“Why did you come with me?!”
“Because I don’t understand how you were attacked!”
The words echoed out in the little room, leaving only the sound of heavy, angry breathing in their wake. Simon went suddenly still, staring at his friend with muted satisfaction, but Tristan looked as angry as Simon had ever seen him. Every muscle in his body was tensed to the limit, and his eyes flashed dangerously as they burned into Simon’s.
“There,” he panted, “are you happy?”
As fate would have it, Simon was happy. In fact, he was thrilled. Finally, after all this time, he’d gotten someone to leap over the edge with him. To pull back the immovable Guilder curtain and glimpse what was behind. Even if it wasn’t exactly voluntary.
But he didn’t let Tristan see it. To start, he didn’t want to get hit in the face. And furthermore, he found himself highly interested in exactly what Tristan had said.
He didn’t understand how Simon was attacked. Not why. Simon found that quite interesting.
“What do you mean?” he asked sharply.
“Nothing, Simon. Forget it.” Tristan’s fist clenched sporadically on the strap of his bag, but he was no longer trying to leave the room. A fact that was encouraging.
“I’m serious,” Simon asked. “You don’t understand how—”
“How the hell did an inked assassin get inside these walls?” Tristan
demanded suddenly. “It’s not like you can just jump the fence, you know. There are protections.”
Simon’s mind flashed again to Beth, but he shelved it temporarily and paid strict attention. “I…don’t know,” he began. But he needn’t have spoken. Now that the floodgates were finally open, Tristan was on a roll.
“There are guards. Look-outs. Security. Rumor has it, the whole place is even covered by a huge force- field keeping anyone unwanted on the outside. So tell me how he walked in here.” He didn’t wait for a reply. “You can’t. Because it should have been impossible. And they can’t.” His eyes flickered about the room, and it became very clear who he was talking about. “Because, despite all their promises to keep us safe and protected, they don’t know how. Or they let him in.”
There was a strange kind of anger in his voice that Simon had never heard before. A bitter edge that warmed his heart. Finally, after all this time, he wasn’t alone.
“I went to Rockford because I wanted to see it for myself. I wanted to see that it was just a regular drive-by like the news said. That the Council had nothing to do with it. Then everything could go back to normal, and I could just…let it go.” His hands ran over his face and he looked abruptly tired. “But I can’t. Because, while they might not have killed the boy themselves, it was their fault that he was out there to begin with. Hiding with his parents. Completely exposed.”
While Simon couldn’t have been more relieved to hear someone else saying the same things that had been plaguing him for weeks, he knew he had to be careful. His friend was venturing now into a darker world than the one he’d just left. A world full of questions instead of answers. Doubt instead of certainty. A world where he would not be protected if he were to speak out. “I know,” he began delicately. “I’ve been thinking all those things myself.”
His eyes met Tristan’s across the room, but just as he was struggling to come up with the next thing to say, a strange calm came over him. It was exactly as it had been back in his dorm room, when he recounted the attack to the delight of his newfound audience. He suddenly found that he knew exactly what to say. Exactly how to move. Exactly how to act to get Tristan to go along with anything that he had in mind.
“Trist…” his voice gentled to a deceptively persuasive tone, “do you know if any of the other guys feel this way? Is anyone else asking these kinds of questions?”
Tristan’s eyes tightened protectively as he thought about his friends. This level of wasteland purgatory was the last place he wanted them to be. “Simon, I don’t think we should—”
“Because you said it yourself,” Simon interrupted smoothly. “We’re supposed to be protected, but we’re not. We’re supposed to be safe behind these walls, but we’re not. They’re supposed to be the good guys…” He let his voice trail off, either unwilling or unable to say it directly. But his point was clear.
Tristan stepped back with an involuntary shudder as Simon pretended not to watch him out of the corner of his eye. A civil war was raging behind his troubled face, one from which he could find no escape. The doubt that had been leveled against them was too great to ignore, and yet—
“I have to get to class,” he said quietly.
Simon nodded quickly and took a step back. He didn’t want to push too hard, too fast. No matter what position of authority he had recently acquired, Tristan was still the king around here. Get him on board, and the rest would follow. Simon just had to be patient.
“Yeah, me, too.” They headed out together. “Sorry about stealing your ink,” he said with a sudden grin as he gestured to Tristan’s arm. “Couldn’t help myself.”
Tristan looked down in surprise, still lost in a wave of dissonant confusion, before he flashed a tight smile. “Try harder.”
Then, with a parting wave, the boys headed off in different directions. Neither really seeing the hall in front of them. Both obviously feeling very differently about their impromptu little talk.
* * *
Simon couldn’t pay attention in class that day. He couldn’t keep his mind on training later that afternoon. It was probably for the best that Jason had pawned him off onto a lesser assistant. He kept replaying the conversation he’d had with Tristan over and over again in his head.
What might he have done wrong? What could he have said differently?
About half a dozen times he considered tracking Tristan down so he could try again, but each time he stopped himself. Not only was Tristan currently getting ripped to pieces by Masters on Simon’s own behalf, an inopportune time to be asking a favor, but Simon didn’t want to push so hard that the guy would walk the other way.
He’d said what he wanted to say. More importantly, after a few well-placed prompts, he’d stepped back and gotten Tristan to say what he wanted to say as well. Words were always more convincing if the person saying them thought they were their own idea. While these ones happened to be true, Simon sincerely doubted Tristan would have done a thing about them if he hadn’t said so himself.
So he waited. And fretted. And wondered again and again if he’d blown his only chance.
But then, with a little less than twenty minutes left until curfew, there was a sudden knock on Simon’s door. Half-thinking that Brick had locked himself out again, he answered without thinking.
…and was surprised as hell to see a dozen guys waiting on the other side.
What the hell?
“Uh…hi,” he stammered nervously, staring out at the sea of expectant faces.
Although they were all faces that he knew, no one cracked a smile or gave him even the slightest indication of what was coming next. Quite the contrary: in the darkened shadows of the hall, most of them looked rather sinister.
Then Tristan walked through the crowd.
“I filled some of the guys in on what’s been happening.” He looked neither angry nor relieved. But some indecipherable place in the middle.
“Oh yeah?” Simon looked around the crowd now with a new sense of anxiety. Had they all dismissed the notion outright? Resented the fact that he’d dragged their fearless leader into a shit-storm of trouble? Had they come to personally escort him to Masters right now?
He leaned back a fraction of an inch, prepared to make a stand right there in the dorm. If the administration knew he was questioning their leadership, he wouldn’t be long at this school.
One way or another.
“That’s right,” Tristan continued. “But there was only so much I could say.”
His eyes flashed up to Simon’s, and for a moment time seemed to stand still.
“I thought you could say the rest…”
Chapter 10
With as much gravity as he could possibly muster, Simon Kerrigan lifted his hands to the sky. “I officially call to order our first meeting—”
“Wait a minute, meeting? Who said anything about this being an official meeting?”
“Yeah, I literally thought we were just coming here for the fish and chips.”
“On that note, Simon, can you hang on a minute?” Isaac interrupted. “Some of us still have to put in an order.”
Simon dropped his hands and let his head fall into his palms as he stared down at the table. This was not exactly reaching the high pinnacles of glory he had hoped. Argyle and Tristan sat on either side. One was watching the proceedings with a thoughtful frown, the other, with a decided smirk.
“Not so easy to control them, is it?” Tristan muttered with a grin.
Argyle merely stared in fascination. “I can’t believe Zane is going to put all those crisps into his mouth at the same time…”
“Guys,” Simon tried again. “We’re having this meeting to—”
“Seriously,” Rob said again, “we never said it was a ‘meeting.’ It makes it sound like some kind of cult.”
Simon threw up his hands in exasperation this time. “If it wasn’t a meeting, then why did you think Argyle’s been writing everything down?”
Rob eyed the little Scotsman spe
culatively. “To be honest, I kind of assumed he always did that. He looks like the nerdish type.”
Before the casual observation could erupt into a full-fledged argument, Tristan held up his hand with a grin. “We’re meeting today, to talk about what’s been going on lately at school.”
“What’s been going on?” Zane asked through a mouthful of crisps. “I thought school was pretty much the same as it’s always been.”
Tristan’s eyes cooled. “You mean, other than the attack on Simon’s life?”
The crisps were momentarily forgotten. Zane glanced up, then swallowed apologetically. “Right. Sorry, Simon.”
Simon couldn’t have cared less. This wasn’t about him. It was about the principle of the thing. And right now he’d take his chances with Bullseye again if it meant that these guys would stop horsing around for just one second and pay attention.
But the more he looked around, the less he thought that was likely to happen.
It wasn’t an easy group, nor was it an inconspicuous one. In fact, if one didn’t already know about the supernatural bond that connected them, one might wonder what hidden qualities had brought such a seemingly random assortment of teenagers together. They didn’t look the same, though they were all attractive. They didn’t act the same, although there was an overall sense of restlessness about them. In the end, the only thing that really connected them was the fact that they were undoubtedly, undeniably different.
It was a difference you could notice at a glance. As if the very air around them seemed to buzz on a slightly higher frequency. The entire table teemed with an excess of energy. One that Simon doubted the boys noticed themselves. When you spent all your time living in a school surrounded by people exactly like you, the telling little details tended to slip through the cracks. But out here, in the real world, they couldn’t have been more noticeable.
Arturo, the resident genius, was distractedly tracing self-created variations of the Pythagorean Theorem on his napkin. Rob and Isaac, the gang’s shifters, looked quite possibly feral, gnawing away on their drumsticks as they spoke at pitches too low for human ears. Eli Winters, a supernaturally gifted escape artist affectionately nicknamed Houdini, was rubbing absentmindedly at his ink while Zane Remmers, a newer kid to the school with telekinetic charm, kept summoning sugar packets into his hand from under the table.
