by David Lubar
But Saturday nights were tough.
Dan walked.
He passed through his own neighborhood, traveling as unnoticed as a gum wrapper blowing across the pavement. He entered another part of town, where the houses were older and the streets were narrower. I’ve got to change, he thought. This can’t go on forever. He remembered a moment from far in his past. Hiding behind his mother’s legs as she’d talked to one of her friends, he’d heard her say, “Dan’s shy.” She’d spoken as if this explained all he was and all he’d ever be.
Dan walked.
He passed another party in a house to his right. Loud music washed over him as it spilled across the lawn. Ahead, Dan saw a group of kids coming toward him. He recognized several of them from school.
Join them, he thought. It should be so easy. Just say hi and turn and walk the way they walked. They reached him. He took a breath to speak. The words didn’t come.
The kids passed him, talking and horsing around.
Another memory drifted into his thoughts. Another phrase spoken often in the past. Dan doesn’t make friends easily.
Dan walked.
He started to cross the street, moving slowly, thinking about how hard it was for him to say “hi” and wondering why it seemed so easy for everyone else.
A car horn blasted through him.
Dan jumped.
The car shot by, just missing him.
Dan walked.
He wandered until he found himself near the end of a dead-end street in the oldest part of town. The other houses were dark, but one house, the final house, showed signs of life. Dan could see kids inside listening to music, their images blurred by the thin curtains that hung in the windows.
The curtains blew open for a moment in the light breeze, giving him a better view. A couple of the kids looked familiar.
“It’s now or never,” Dan told himself. “I’m going to do it,” he whispered. He paused at the front steps, angry with his own heart for pounding so hard and betraying his anxiety. He wiped his palms against his shirt as he thought about walking up to the door.
Then he did it. He went up the steps.
He knocked. The act was more final and more frightening than stepping off the high dive for the first time.
As Dan heard the sound of his knock, he froze, realizing he couldn’t just invite himself inside. He needed to think of some excuse for barging in. He decided he could just pretend he was asking for directions. That would work. But where should he ask directions to? What were the street names around here? Dan wasn’t sure. He would have turned and run had he not been nailed to the ground with panic.
The door swung open. “Hi,” a kid his own age said.
Dan felt the silence wrap around him like an endless roll of gauze. It was his turn to speak, but he wasn’t sure if he could manage even the smallest sound. Then the word slipped from his mouth. “Hi.” It seemed small and weak. But it made the next words easier. “I was walking by and saw you guys, and I wondered …” It was easier, but it was still the hardest thing he had ever done.
The kid smiled, melting some of Dan’s fear. “Come on in. Join the party.”
Dan stepped inside, amazed, now that the moment was past, that he had actually come this far. There were about a dozen kids in the room, both boys and girls. Most were around his age.
“I’m Shawn,” the boy said.
Dan introduced himself.
“Well, come join the party,” Shawn said again.
“Thanks.” He looked at Shawn, then asked, “Do you go to Thomas Edison?”
“I used to,” Shawn said.
Dan wondered whether Shawn had switched to one of the private schools. But he didn’t want to be nosy. He struggled to think of something else to say.
A girl joined them. “This is Cindy,” Shawn said. “And this is Dan.”
“Hi, Dan.” Cindy smiled.
Dan smiled back. He exchanged a few words with Cindy. She introduced Dan to a few more kids. Each new face was easier to meet. After a while, Dan began to feel comfortable at the party. He found two boys who liked swimming as much as he did. And he learned that he and Cindy had the same favorite authors.
As Dan stood in the corner of the room, talking with several of the kids, his eyes drifted back toward Shawn. The boy, as if feeling the gaze, came over toward Dan.
“It’s bothering you, isn’t it,” Shawn said.
“What?”
“Come on, I know you’re trying to think where you’ve seen me. Right?”
“Right,” Dan admitted. “Do I know you?”
“Think back a few years.”
Dan looked at Shawn and tried to picture him as he might have been a few years ago. Then he shook his head. “Nope, I guess it’s my imagination.” Then a thought hit him. “Wait, do you have an older brother?”
Shawn shook his head. “No. I’m an only child. But now you’re on the right track.”
“What do you mean?” Dan asked.
“What if you were younger, but I wasn’t?”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Dan said. But as the words left his lips, he realized that it did. He stared at Shawn and the name and the face and the memory slammed into him. He stumbled back, sitting hard on the couch, remembering a kid who was two years older. “Shawn Jepson. The kid who …” He stopped.
It couldn’t be.
Shawn nodded. “Yup, the kid who fell through the ice back when you were in fourth grade. I was in sixth. Mr. Martin’s class.”
Dan remembered that sad winter, with the funeral, though the memory was smudged by the passage of time. Shawn had been two years older than Dan. Now he looked the same age. “You died,” Dan said.
Shawn shrugged. “Yeah, that’s me. And you might remember Ricky over there.” He pointed to another kid. “Climbed one of those power towers and got zapped. Cindy had a heart problem. She was a year ahead of you, and she wasn’t in school very much, so you probably don’t remember her. I don’t think you knew any of the others.”
“You’re all dead?” Numbed as he was, Dan rose from the couch.
“Yup.” Shawn grinned. “That’s life.”
Dan closed his eyes for a moment, remembering a car that had come so close to hitting him. “Am I dead, too?”
Shawn laughed. Then he shook his head. “No, you’re alive.”
“Then how … ?” He let the sentence dangle unfinished, not sure he wanted to hear the answer. How could he see them? Why was he here?
“We just felt sorry for you,” Shawn said.
Dan opened his mouth to protest. He didn’t want pity. Another conversation rose from his mind. “Dan seems pretty happy by himself,” his mother had told a neighbor just last week.
Dan gazed at the rest of the kids. They smiled at him. Cindy winked. Dan stared at his own hands, as if he might disprove his existence by seeing through his flesh. Both hands were solid. “I’m not dead?”
“No.” Shawn put his hand on Dan’s shoulder and led him to the door. “You’re alive. But the way you’re living, it’s hard to tell. Look, it’s pretty pathetic when dead kids like us feel sorry for someone.” He opened the door.
Dan stared outside, not sure he wanted to leave.
“Go on,” Shawn said. “You’ve got a lot of living to do. Better get started.”
Dan moved onto the porch. “Thanks.”
“My pleasure.”
Dan started to walk down the steps. Behind him, as the door was closing, he heard Shawn say, “Go out there and knock ’em dead, kid.”
There was a soft click as the door closed. The sound of party music faded. Dan walked away. He wanted to see them once more before he left, but he didn’t look back. He knew his future was ahead of him.
THE BILLION LEGGER
Charlie threw a book at the centipede. He didn’t even think, he just reacted. Across the room, halfway up the wall opposite his bed, was one of those disgusting creatures with the fuzzy body and countless rippling legs. It was the m
otion that had caught Charlie’s eye—that smooth, flowing motion like a living piece of liquid rope. Now, under his full gaze, the bug froze, as if waiting for him to make his move. He made that move with the nearest thing at hand—two pounds of dead weight called Fun with Verbs and Nouns.
The book missed by less than an inch. It slammed against the wall, then dropped to the floor, lying open with its pages slowly turning.
The centipede slipped under Charlie’s desk, vanishing like a slurped strand of spaghetti. Charlie rolled off the bed, dashed across the room, and peered beneath the desk. He found dust and scattered bits of junk, but no sign of insect life. Part of him was relieved that he had missed. The thought of that thing squished and dead—or worse, squished and dying-made him feel sick.
But at least it was gone. Charlie figured he’d scared it off for good.
He saw the centipede again that evening. Just as he was about to switch off his lamp, he saw a slithering intrusion on the ceiling. The bug was right over his bed—directly above his head. Charlie jumped to his feet and searched for something that could smash the life from the centipede. He grabbed his pants from the floor, thinking he could swipe at the ceiling and knock the insect down. Then he could crush it and be done with it. He looked up.
The centipede was gone.
Charlie slept poorly that night. In his dreams, a million tiny legs brushed his face.
“Mom,” he asked the next morning, “do we have any bug spray?”
“Why?” she asked.
“There’s a big bug in my room.”
“Leave it alone,” she said. “It won’t hurt you.”
“Mom, it’s a really big bug. It’s huge.”
His mom sighed. Charlie could tell she wasn’t going to argue further. “Look in the garage,” she said.
“Thanks.” Charlie found a can. The label said it was for ants and other crawling insects. This should do the trick, he thought as he went back to his room. He figured anything with that many legs pretty much had to crawl. But it wouldn’t be crawling much longer. Charlie followed the directions, spraying all along the baseboards. Then he stuck his arm under his desk and held the nozzle down for a long time. The room filled with an interesting smell, an almost sweet smell.
“The line of death …” Charlie said aloud as he finished spraying. He imagined the bug falling to the ground, dropping from whatever wall it hid upon like a toy dart when the suction cup gives out. He imagined it squirming in agony as the spray destroyed its tiny brain and turned its nervous system into mush. Charlie caught his reflection in the mirror as he left the room. He hadn’t realized he was smiling.
He checked his room later, eager for any sign that he had won. There were several dead bugs on the floor, but they were all spiders. That was fine with Charlie—he didn’t particularly like spiders either. It was their tough luck if they got in the way of the spray.
That evening, as Charlie trudged through his homework, the centipede ran across the wall above his desk. Charlie rushed to the garage for the spray can. By the time he returned, the bug was nowhere in sight. He sprayed the wall, leaving a large, wet blotch. As he finished, he wondered if this was the same bug. It seemed longer than before.
The next day, it looked even longer as it raced across a different part of the wall.
Charlie didn’t know whether there were several centipedes or if there was one that just kept growing. The first time he’d seen it, it couldn’t have been more than three inches long. Now, it looked more like five.
It kept getting longer.
And it kept refusing to die. Day after day, Charlie sprayed, until the can was empty. The bug didn’t seem to be bothered by the chemical fog.
Night after night, Charlie threw books and balls and hard toys at it. He always missed. The wall was chipped and cracked in half a dozen spots. The centipede was untouched. Charlie tried hitting it with a flyswatter, a yardstick, and a dozen other weapons. Once, Charlie even took a swipe with his bare hand, not caring what the mess might feel like. He didn’t come close.
The centipede grew bolder. One night, it crawled across Charlie as he slept. Each night after that, he’d wake up startled as the centipede brushed against his hand or leg or face. And each night, he’d swat at it in terror, slapping blindly at his body, then striking against the bed as he searched for the centipede in the rumpled sheets. But he always missed.
It was at least a foot long now.
Charlie had never heard of a centipede that big. It’s just a matter of time, he told himself. The bigger it got, the easier it would be to catch. He couldn’t keep missing forever.
He started sitting up in bed at night, holding a rock he’d brought in from the yard, gripping it so hard it left a pattern of craters on the flesh of his palm. One good hit-that’s all he needed. But there was never any warning. It would just be there, on the wall or on the ceiling, silent as a cobweb. He never saw it crawling out from any hiding place.
It grew bigger, but it didn’t grow slower. At two feet, it easily evaded his attacks. At three feet, it was still too fast to hit.
Every night now it would run across his chest, then pause for an instant as if measuring him. Charlie would wake and slash his hands out. He’d miss.
One evening Charlie woke and saw the centipede slithering across his wall like a toy train.
“Stop!” he shouted.
It stopped.
“Look,” Charlie said, slowly getting out of bed. “I’m sorry about throwing that book at you. Honest. I shouldn’t have done that. Leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone.”
The centipede didn’t move. Charlie took a step closer. “Is it a deal?” He took another step. The centipede stayed where it was. Charlie kept talking, sure now that his voice was keeping the insect frozen in place. He inched closer. “I’m sorry about the spray.” Another step. “We can stay out of each other’s way. There’s plenty of room here for both of us. Okay?” Another step. “I promise not to hurt you.”
He was within reach. Now! he thought as he swung his hand with all his strength, smacking the wall with his palm. The impact shook the wall and stung his hand.
The centipede had shifted. The body had moved so fast that it was, for an instant, nothing but a flexing blur. Then it fled. He’d missed. It was gone.
That night, Charlie had the worst dream yet. The centipede lay on his chest, but he couldn’t hit it. He couldn’t move. The dream woke Charlie, but the terror remained.
“What?” Charlie gasped, confused, only half awake. He struggled to lift his arms. Someone had tied him down. A rope was coiled around his body and across his chest.
Not a rope …
A centipede.
Charlie thrashed against the mattress and tried to twist free, but the centipede tightened its grip. His vision grew blurry. The walls and ceiling of his room seemed to be rippling and moving.
But everything else in the room was sharp and clear. Charlie looked again and realized what he was seeing. The walls weren’t blurry. The walls were covered with centipedes. Small ones, long ones; thousands of them waited on every side of his room.
The centipedes stayed in place for a moment, as if to make sure he noticed them. Then, all at once, they moved toward the bed.
“Stop!” Charlie cried.
This time, they didn’t even pause to listen.
THE BATTLE-AX
Alex and I were digging in the woods above the creek, looking for worms, when we found it. I hadn’t even dug that deep—maybe a foot or so—when I felt this thud. My shovel hit something hard. It was like in those cartoons where the bad guy swings a bat at the good guy and he hits a brick wall instead. Then the shock waves travel up the bat and the bad guy starts shaking all over. My hands shook with the impact, and it felt like the shakes traveled right up my arms to my shoulders, and down my back to my legs.
“Hit a rock?” Alex asked, looking up from where he was digging.
“I don’t know.” I pushed aside a handful of dirt. �
�Hey, it’s some kind of metal.” I moved aside more of the dirt.
“Maybe it’s a treasure,” Alex said, hurrying over.
“Maybe.” I started digging a wider hole toward the edges of the object. Alex got on the other side and helped me.
In a moment, we had uncovered enough to know what it was. At first, we just stared at it, then stared at each other. I couldn’t believe our luck. I’d bet Alex couldn’t either.
“Whatcha doing?”
I spun toward my little brother, Billy, who had wandered up from the house. Billy stood far enough back so he couldn’t see into the hole.
“Nothing. Go play.”
“Show me,” he said. “I wanna see.”
I moved a step closer to Billy, making sure I was between him and the hole. “Get out.”
“I’ll tell Mom.”
“Get out,” I said again, trying to sound dangerous. “You’re not going to tell her anything.”
“I will, too,” he said. Then he ran off.
“Think he’ll tell?” Alex asked.
“Nah. He wouldn’t dare. He knows I’d get him for it.” I went back to the hole and knelt, running my hand along the metal. “Hey, it’s shiny.” I’d expected it to be old and rusted, but the blade, beneath the dirt, looked bright and polished.
I brushed off the rest of the dirt and lifted my treasure from the earth. “Wow …” I’d seen stuff like this in museums, but I couldn’t believe I was holding a battle-ax.
“Viking?” Alex asked.
“I don’t know.” I had no idea where it had been made, but I knew what it had been made for. This was a battle-ax. Whether it had belonged to a Viking raider or one of the knights of the Round Table, I couldn’t guess. I also had no idea how it had ended up in the woods above the river in a place that had never been visited by knights or Vikings.
“Let me see,” Alex said, reaching out.
“Hang on.” I wanted to study it more before handing it over. I examined the head. It looked like it had gotten a lot of use. The edge was sharp, but there were gouges and nicks in the metal. I ran my eyes down the shaft. That’s when I saw the small red jewel embedded into the wood of the handle. It was set about eight inches above the end of the shaft, right where someone might grip it to swing the ax.
