“Jason. Adam. What’s up?”
“Adam and I were just admiring your shoes,” said Jason. “Hey, where do you think I could get a pair like that?”
Parker gritted his teeth. He was wearing sneakers from Payless. The worst thing that could happen to a kid was to get caught wearing sneakers from Payless.
“My uncle brought them back from England, so you probably can’t get them. Sorry.”
“He bring you that shirt, too?” asked Jason. “It looks like something you would get at Kmart.”
Caught again. Parker hated going to school with rich kids.
“Ouch!” he said. “You got me. Well, see you later.”
Parker turned to go. He would walk away. He would stay out of trouble.
Jason stepped in front of him. “Come on, Parker. What’s your hurry? Let’s hang out for a minute.”
“You know, Jason, I would like to, really, but I think I had better be getting back. If Mr. Ardigo finds out I’m gone, I’ll be in detention for the rest of my life.”
“Yeah, well, it’s just that Adam and I have a question for you.” Jason stepped right up to Parker. “What’s it like being poor?”
Parker bit his lip. He would stay cool. “You know what they say, Jason. Money can’t buy you love.”
“Yeah, but it can buy a lot of other things.”
Parker couldn’t help himself. “Obviously, not a decent haircut,” he said. “It looks like you got yours in a helicopter in the middle of a tornado.”
Adam guffawed, but the smirk on Jason’s face disappeared. Parker knew he had made a tactical error. Rich kids can dish it out, but they can’t take it.
“Kidding!” he said. “I’m just kidding around.”
“Oh, we know,” Jason said. “You’re a funny guy.”
“Great! So we’re cool?”
Jason shook his head. While Adam stood watch, Jason shoved Parker against a wall.
“I hate funny guys,” said Jason.
Parker stepped back, but there was nowhere to go. He was boxed in.
“Come on, guys,” he said. “This is stupid. Let’s just go find the class.”
“Wow. Now you’re saying I’m stupid? You just don’t know when to shut up, do you?”
Jason raised his fist and laughed when Parker flinched.
“See that, Adam? He’s just a talker. Parker’s jealous. He knows that we have futures. We’ll go to college, and then we’ll get killer jobs and make lots of money, and he’ll be watching from the sidelines. See, Parker here doesn’t have a future. He’s trash and he’ll always be trash. He’ll probably end up in jail.”
Jason leaned right into Parker’s face.
“Just like his father.”
And that’s when Parker snapped. The fingers on his right hand closed into a fist and he punched Jason in the face as hard as he could.
Jason fell to the ground, and for a moment, everything was calm. Jason clutched his nose, Adam stared in disbelief, and Parker stood, his hands still clenched, shocked at his own outburst.
Then Jason pulled his bloody hand away from his messed-up nose and broke the tension.
“Oh, Parker,” he said. “You are so dead.”
Parker looked at Jason. Then he looked at Adam. Then, for a split second, he looked at June, who was watching horrified from the gift shop. Then Parker made maybe his best decision of the day.
He decided to run.
PROPERTY OF PROFESSOR J. ELLISON
CAHILL UNIVERSITY
UNEARTHED OUTSIDE TAL SALHAB, SYRIA 7/12/63
DOCUMENT B31771—TRANSLATED 2/65–10/68
VESIROTH’S JOURNAL, CIRCA 1200 B.C.
The war came to us.
I had heard of the battles, of course, when I went into town to barter for goods, and I saw the soldiers when I sold my crops in the city. No one could tell me what the war was about, though rumors abounded. Some said it was a dispute about land. Others thought it was a battle to control the river that sustains us all. Perhaps it was not about anything so practical. Perhaps someone’s great-great-grandfather had insulted someone else’s great-great-grandfather hundreds of years ago and everyone was still upset. Such things are what make wars.
I was a farmer, not important enough to be kept informed, too busy to find out for myself. The fighting meant nothing to me. It did not affect the seasons or the way the sun hit the soil or the way the sands shifted in the north. I was concerned only with my crops and with my wife and with my daughters. I had no time for politics. There was always work to do.
The day that changed my life forever progressed like any other. I was in the fields, the hot sun on my back. My youngest sat near me in the dirt. She was playing with a toy stallion I had carved from a spare piece of wood. I remember how she looked up at me and how she smiled. She was beautiful and young and perfect, and I adored her. When I winked at her, she giggled.
I cherished those moments, and I knew that when the workday was over and our simple meal was eaten, my family and I would gather by the fire. My hands would be sore and my back would ache, but my daughters would make up stories to entertain me, and we would all laugh. We would sing songs and play silly games. I would send the children to bed, and my wife and I would share a quiet moment, knowing we were blessed. My life was hard, but I would not have traded places with the sultan. I was happy.
My daughter went back to her toy, and I returned to my work. That is when I saw the soldiers riding toward the house.
I was confused. I was no one. Their war had nothing to do with me.
My daughter abandoned her toy and hurried to meet them, her black hair flowing behind her as she ran. She loved horses, and she had hoped that the men galloping to us in a storm of dust were part of a circus. She thought the best of people, always. Children do.
I knew better. They carried torches and swords. These men were part of no circus. I dropped my scythe and I ran.
I grabbed my daughter in my arms and I put her inside our little house. I knew my wife would be grinding meal by the fire. I knew my oldest child would be tending the animals nearby.
I gathered them together and told them to stay inside. I took my copper ax, the finest tool I owned, and I went out to meet the soldiers.
Surely, they would listen to reason. Surely, they would see that we were no threat, that we were a humble family with no ties to power, no stake in their fight.
The men stopped their horses in front of me. I raised my hand in greeting.
I was rewarded with a club to the side of my head.
I fell to the dirt.
I tried to get up, but my legs would not stay beneath me. I saw these men dismount from their horses and kick in the door to my house. I stumbled toward them, but I could do nothing as they raised their torches.
The soldiers laughed as they set fire to my home, laughed when my daughters and my wife cried out from inside, laughed when I tried to stop them.
I was weak. They batted me away like a toy. I fell again, and one of the men grabbed me by the hair. He held my arms behind my back and forced my face down into the fire. I could hear my own skin as it sizzled like cooked meat.
Thankfully, I blacked out. I would not have to hear my family’s cries as they died.
Hours later, as I faded in and out of consciousness, I felt myself being dragged from the smoldering ruins. It was an old man. I tried to tell him to leave me where I was. Everything I had was gone. I had no reason to keep on living.
Before the words could come, the blackness took me again. That is how I came to travel with Farrad, alive but with all meaning for my life stripped away.
2
PARKER RAN DOWN A SET of stairs and straight into the observatory’s crowded main exhibit floor. He pushed his way through a group of Cub Scouts looking at a video slide show of the stars, and by a family with six (six!) kids in matching T-shirts who were testing out a set of scales that showed you how much you would weigh on Mars.
He ran behind a statue of Einstein si
tting on a bench, and then up another flight of stairs, using kids and guides as shields, but he couldn’t shake Jason and Adam. They were right behind him.
“You’re dead, Parker!”
I know, thought Parker. I know.
He poured it on and got ahead of the kids chasing him. The next level of the building was a long hallway full of exhibits stretching in both directions. Parker ducked out of sight behind a massive globe of the moon. He stayed perfectly still while Adam and Jason rounded the corner and ran the other way.
A little kid with a toy rocket stared at Parker, and Parker grinned back, relieved. He was in the clear.
When he stood up, though, his jacket caught on the metal stand that was holding the globe up. Parker’s grin vanished as the globe came spinning down and landed with a thud at the rocket kid’s feet. Then it started to slowly roll.
Someone yelled, “Hey!”
Great, thought Parker. A security guard. Where was he when I was being threatened by my buddies Jason and Adam?
The guard ran to Parker, clutching his belt with his left hand so his radio and flashlight didn’t bang into his legs.
“Don’t move! Stay right there!”
Good advice, thought Parker. But not great advice. He ran again.
“Hey!” said the guard. Parker looked over his shoulder and saw that the huge globe was gathering speed and scattering people left and right as it cut a swath through the museum. The Cub Scouts scrambled for cover, tangling up the guard, who watched helplessly as the globe smashed into Einstein’s bench and knocked the statue over.
Mr. Ardigo’s not going to be happy about that, thought Parker. He ducked under a brass railing and burst through some closed doors into the planetarium, where the show he was supposed to be watching was just getting started. A machine rose up in the middle of the room and projected lights and colors onto the domed ceiling to make you feel like you were looking at space. The show’s narrator explained how far away the stars were and talked about how the different constellations got their names, and pointed out the Milky Way and the Crab Nebula. The seats were laid back so you didn’t have to crane your neck to look up.
Parker didn’t have time to enjoy the show. He ran straight to the exit on the other side of the room, the security guard on his tail.
“Parker!” said Mr. Ardigo from one of the seats. “That had better not be you!”
“It’s not!” Parker said as he got through the exit door, just steps ahead of the guard, who had renewed the hunt with a very red face and a burst of not-so-good-natured intensity.
Parker ducked behind a wall, and the guard ran right past, barking into his radio.
Parker put his hands on his knees, out of breath from all that running. An old man stared at him.
“The scope of the universe,” Parker panted. “It takes my breath away.”
Parker had escaped. He had no idea what to do next, but the important thing was that, for the moment at least, he was safe.
“Hey, buddy,” said a voice behind him.
Parker turned. It was Jason and Adam.
“We’ve been looking all over for you.”
Parker ran once more, this time heading for open space. He slammed the handle on some glass doors and found himself outside.
The exterior of the observatory was even more impressive than the inside. There were walkways on every floor, with coin-operated telescopes mounted to the railings so you could look at Los Angeles. Girls posed while their boyfriends took their pictures in front of the city.
It really was some view. From here, LA didn’t look half bad.
Parker stopped. The sweaty security guard was coming the other way.
He was in it now. If he went left, Adam and Jason would get him. If he went right, he’d run straight into the security guard. He was toast.
Parker didn’t know the place’s layout, but he knew that the levels were all connected by stairways. Piece of cake. He would jump the wall, land on the stairs, and run down to the bottom level. Easy. Elegant, even. Parker put his hand on the railing and vaulted over.
Except the stairs were on the other side of the building, and Parker had just launched himself over the edge of a cliff. The only thing there was a hundred-foot drop and some very unfriendly looking rocks.
Holy crap, thought Parker. Jason was right. I really am dead.
B31772—VESIROTH’S JOURNAL, CIRCA 1200 B.C.
I have been with Farrad for weeks now.
He is an enigma to me. He dresses in tattered robes and worn sandals. He has no friends and mentions no family. Even his age is a mystery to me.
We never stay in one place for more than a few days. He trades household objects out of his battered wagon, earning just enough silver to keep us in food and his old horse in oats. I do not know where he comes from or where he is heading. He seldom speaks, and when he does he says no more than a few words at a time.
He has taken great care to nurse me back to health. He fed me broth until I was strong enough to take solid food. He covered my damaged face with bandages. He gave me clothes and a place to lay my head. At night we sit by the fire in silence. Farrad stares into the flames and thinks his thoughts. He has asked me no questions about myself, although he must know what happened to me. If he takes any satisfaction at having saved my life, he does not show it. His kindness to me feels less like a good deed and more like atonement for past sins.
I can think of nothing but my family and how I failed them.
One day, while Farrad was away trading, the grief I felt over the death of my wife and daughters finally overwhelmed me. I felt I could not bear another night of loneliness, another night of black dreams that ended in me sweating through my bandages and screaming myself awake. I had nothing to live for, and my despair was so great that I sought to do myself harm.
I searched for something, anything I could use to take my own life. Perhaps Farrad had foreseen my joyless mood, for the wagon was devoid of weapons of any kind, and even the sham ointments foisted off on gullible peasants as a cure-all for anything from coughing fits to baldness were gone.
In my desperation, I tore the wagon apart. Just when my mood was at its bleakest, my hands felt a weak spot in the wood of Farrad’s driver’s bench. I pried it open and found hidden within an ancient book, so old that at first I dared not open it lest the pages crumble into dust. I found my courage, though, and I opened the volume to read.
What I found astounded me. The book is an ancient compendium of arcane magick, written by hand and bound in some kind of hardened leather. It describes something called the Nexus, which is a force of magick that surrounds everyone and everything. With the right spells, potions, amulets, and talismans, the book claims that it is possible to tap into the Nexus and amass great power.
The book is the first thing, the only thing, to hold my interest since the destruction of my family. I became obsessed. I read it through that night and put it back in its hiding place before Farrad returned. Now, whenever he is gone, I go back to the pages. They pull at me, call to me even. They quiet the screams of my wife and daughters when they threaten to smother me. The secrets of the universe are contained within them.
I am especially beguiled by the book’s concluding page. There is written a fragment of an incantation that promises ultimate power. The spell is incomplete, but it intrigues me and haunts my sleep.
Perhaps in the Nexus I may find the peace that eludes me.
3
APPARENTLY, MERCURY AND THE REST of the observatory gods were feeling...benevolent.
Mr. Ardigo, out looking for his favorite student and for once in his life at the exact right place at the exact right time, grabbed Parker’s arm and stopped him from getting all the way over the railing and splatting to a messy death on the rocks below.
He stopped Parker in midair and dragged him back over the wall. Mr. Ardigo didn’t let go until they were both lying in a heap next to the wall.
“Thanks,” said Parker, his eyes wide with a
mazement. “For a minute there I was in serious trouble.”
Oh, thought Mr. Ardigo, you have no idea what serious trouble is.
“Suspended. Well, that’s just great, Parker. That’s just about perfect.”
Parker stared out the window of the ten-year-old Saturn sedan as his mother drove. The car was once tan, but most of the paint on the roof and the hood had blistered off in the California sun. The back door on the driver’s side was red, replaced after an accident years ago, but never repainted. His mother had assumed she would scrape together the cash to do it someday, but someday never came.
“You talk back. Your grades are terrible, you lost all your friends, and now you’re getting into fights. Awesome. You’re future’s looking brighter every day.”
“I don’t know why I’m the one that’s in trouble!” he said. “Those guys were beating on this little kid and I told them to stop and they turned on me! I should be getting some kind of a reward!”
“Don’t. Don’t even...Just don’t.”
Parker shut his mouth. His mom was wearing her Denny’s uniform, and she smelled like French toast and pancake syrup. That meant that the school called her at work, and that meant that she had to get someone to cover the rest of her shift, and that meant that her boss, Antonio, was not happy, and that was bad news for everyone involved.
“When I think about what a pain it was to move just so you could be in a better school district...” She trailed off. A lot of people told Parker that he looked like his mom. They both had dark brown hair and hazel eyes. Nobody ever told Parker he looked like his dad.
“You know you broke that kid’s nose, right? We’ll be lucky if his parents don’t sue. His dad’s a lawyer. Or a tax guy. Something like that. That’s just what we need.”
She stopped the car at a red light. Parker looked up at a palm tree. In the movies, they seemed so glamorous, but they were everywhere in LA. This one was outside a liquor store with a broken sign.
Rebels of the Lamp, Book 1 Page 2
