by John Conroe
“Of course. Declan does all my tech stuff for me. But really, Chloe. Do you think he even needs them?”
“Yeah, there is that,” her friend agreed.
My first class of the day was Calc. Despite my awesome skills with computers and technology, I suck at advanced math, so I got to start my day with my worst class. At least Rory shared this one with me, and the little brainiac could help me with my homework in study hall.
My oldest friend was hunched over his textbook, his thin shoulder blocking the text. I snuck up behind him and leaned down close. Pitching my voice low, I rumbled, “What’s this, Mr. Tessing? Pornography?” He jumped upright and I reached under his arm to snag the magazine picture he had been obsessing over. Torn from a tabloid, it was a rather revealing photo of a young Hollywood starlet in a skimpy bikini.
“Asshole!” he said, color already returning to his face. Then he looked over my shoulder and his eyes widened. Rory is a sucky actor, so I had a mild moment of panic as I spun around.
“Ah, hi Mr. Crest.”
“Ah, Mr. O’Carrol. Just the student I was looking for. The Smartboard is acting up again. Perhaps you’d be so kind as to take a look at it for me. Oh, and give Mr. Tessing back his pornography,” he said.
Calc might suck, but Dan Crest was a pretty chill teacher. Oddly enough, although he was obviously good at advanced math, he had issues with the school tech on a regular basis. About a quarter of my grade was probably extra credit for helping him with his computer.
“Sure thing, Mr. Crest. Just let the master at it.”
“Masturbator is more like it,” Rory said under his breath. I leaned closed and slipped his eye candy photo back onto his book. “He was talking to me, not you… Mr. Bator.”
I can’t go around drawing runes on my hands all day without people noticing, but I always have a few choice ones drawn on the backs of my class notebooks, and I dragged the one with Cen, which is the rune of knowledge, on it to the front of the room.
Mr. Crest was about to tell me what the Smartboard had been doing wrong when the new girl walked in.
“Hello. New here?” He smiled at her.
“Yes. I’m Sarah Williams,” she said, her expression bland.
“And do you have a slip for me from the office?” he asked.
She looked puzzled.
“Little tear offs at the bottom of your schedule,” I offered, meeting her eyes for a moment before getting back to the desktop computer that was networked to the Smartboard.
She quickly found the slip, ripped it off, and handed to Crest, who directed her to an open seat.
“We’ll be having a quiz today, Sarah, but you can sit this one out till you get caught up,” he told her. The class groaned at the quiz part.
“Actually, Mr. Crest, I would prefer to take the quiz anyway. I’ve had some calculus before,” she said.
“Wow, that’s the spirit. Okay then, why don’t you get settled and we’ll get started as soon as Mr. O’Carroll gets us back on track.”
“Done,” I said, getting up from his desk. The new girl’s distraction had given me free rein, and the problem had been easy to solve once I knew the issue. Internal software conflict with two programs – both photo management – fighting for dominant position.
“Alrighty then. Here are the problems for the quiz. Show all your work. Go ahead and start when you’re ready,” Crest said as I slipped back into my seat and pulled out my calculator.
The smartboard now showed eight problems.
Sarah was sitting three rows over and a couple seats ahead, right in my field of vision. She pulled out paper and pencil and started to work quickly through the quiz. She didn’t have a calculator. It wasn’t slowing her down.
Forty-two minutes later, I took my paper up to Crest. I was second to last. He was already grading some of the early papers. Sarah had been done first, followed quickly by Rory. I could see both their papers and the grades they got.
“How’d ya do?” Rory asked as I sat back down. I shrugged. Certainly not as well as him or the new girl.
“You got a hundred. New girl got a ninety-seven.”
He fist pumped. “Still the Boss!”
“Yeah but she didn’t use a calculator,” I replied, bursting his bubble.
“What? No way! You can’t do that stuff in your head.”
“Way,” I said.
Ahead and to my right, the girl in question raised her head and glanced our way, almost as if she’d heard us from across the room and over the voices of our classmates. Her eyes met mine, narrowed a bit, and then looked away.
Aunt Ashling’s word popped into my head… uncanny.
I saw her again in English, but we didn’t acknowledge each other, and we were seated on opposite sides of the room. Another quiz, but English is one of my stronger subjects, so I knew I had aced it.
When lunch finally came, I found Rory already at our table in the back corner of the cafeteria trading Chuck Norris jokes with Jonah Patel. As tall as Rory was short, Jonah was brainy like Rory, but while he was also on the skinny side, he was a naturally gifted athlete, a standout on the school’s soccer team.
“Chuck Norris counted to infinity—twice,” Jonah said.
“Chuck Norris can cut through a hot knife with butter,” Rory shot back.
The table’s third occupant, Candace Ricci, ignored their sad humor, keeping her attention on whatever today’s flavor of poetry was. Also recognized as one of Castlebury High’s brightest, Candace was our little group’s champion club joiner. She was in the Debate Club, Math Club, Environmental Club, Robot Club, Science Team, Spanish Club, Writers Club, and of course, the Poetry Club. As a seventh grader, she had published her first book, a children’s story in both English and Spanish that was currently in use by many teachers across the country. Despite her Italian last name, her mother was from Puerto Rico and she grew up with Spanish as a second language. The royalties from that little story were going to pay her way through college.
“Chuck Norris is the reason Waldo is hiding,” Jonah responded.
“Ghosts sit around the campfire and tell Chuck Norris stories,” Rory responded, but his attention was now on my lunch bag.
I saw Sarah enter the room from the lunch line, holding her tray while scanning for a place to sit.
I’ve only ever gone to Castlebury, but I’ve been told that lunch is the hardest part of starting at a new school. Some kids even thought that swimming through a shark-filled tank might be less scary.
The junior hippies of America crowd ignored her, while the potheads eyed her like she was a narc. The athletes and cheerleaders smirked and snickered to themselves as she walked through the tables and the nerdy suckup kids all just kept their heads down and made no eye contact. Wisely, she turned away from the fashionista girls before they could mock her clothing choices.
I waved to her. A frown flickered across her face, but there were no other options, so she headed our way. My three companions looked from her to me, questions written in their expressions.
“Hey, we’ve got an empty seat,” I said when she got closer. I introduced the others as she sat down. She nodded back at them, poker face in place, and then got down to eating. I noticed that she had way more food than most girls. Scratch that: way more food than most three girls. Her tray was loaded. Two sandwich wraps, a bag of chips, an apple, banana, a brownie, a chocolate cupcake with white frosting, and two cartons of milk. She ate like it was her job—head down and machine-like.
“Where are you from, Sarah?” Jonah asked after exchanging a raised eyebrow with the rest of us.
She lifted her head, pausing her chewing to answer around a mouth full of what appeared to be chicken salad in a sundried tomato wrap. “Colorado. South of Denver.”
She wasn’t even slightly dainty in her manners, more… guylike.
“Parents change jobs or something?” he asked, gamely trying to create a conversation.
“Yeah,” she answered, flicking her eyes from
his to mine before dropping them to her tray.
Jonah looked at her for a moment, clearly at a loss, before looking at me and mouthing what the fuck? I shrugged and opened my lunch bag. Jonah gave the girl one more glance before turning his attention to my bag. Rory was already focused on it.
I pulled a recycled cardboard takehome box from the bag, the words Rowan West in raised imprint on the top of it. Inside was today’s culinary delight.
“What ya got?” Rory asked.
“Looks to be a Black Forest ham, Swiss cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, sliced apple, and honey mustard sandwich on oatmeal bread. A Granny Smith apple, a Stewart’s Orange Crème soda, and some of her homemade chips. Dammit, no cookies,” I answered.
Sarah had paused in her eating to watch my unveiling. She looked from my lunch to my eyes, pulling her head back and tilting it to one side.
“One of the many job perks of being a restaurant dishwasher. My aunt or whatever chef is cooking through the dinner hour packs my lunch.”
“Why can’t they pack my lunch?” Rory complained.
“Because you don’t wash thousands of dishes every week and your allowance is still more than I make,” I replied. “You could just buy a Rowan West lunch every day.”
His parents were both professors at UVM. His father was head of the Chemistry department and his mom taught Psychology to undergraduates. An only child, he was the Tessings’ pride and joy.
“That’s brilliant!” he exclaimed. “My parents worship the ground your aunt walks on, so they would love the idea I was getting a Vermont-produced, nutritious lunch!”
“Why?” Sarah suddenly asked.
“Why would they want me to eat nutritionally?” Rory asked.
The brown-haired girl shook her head. “No. Why do they worship his aunt?” she asked, pointing her thumb in my direction.
“Because I got lost in the woods as a little kid and she found me,” Rory said. I stopped chewing, not liking where this was headed. As usual, Rory was oblivious. Candace, however, glanced my way.
“How did she find you? She a good tracker?” Sarah asked.
“No she…” Rory started, but I interrupted.
“Hey, who’s going to the Homecoming dance?”
There was an awkward moment of quiet as everyone wrestled with how to handle my blatant topic change. Sarah looked at me with narrowed eyes but said nothing, instead continuing to chew.
“I’m going with either Elle Resner or Jess Trainor,” Jonah said into the silence.
Rory, who had been left with his mouth hanging open, looked from me to the tall boy beside him. “What the hell does that mean? You’re either going with one or the other. Which is it?”
“It means he hasn’t asked either yet but is still working up to it,” Candace said, peeling the top off a container of applesauce.
“Technically, you’re correct, but I’m confident that one or the other will say yes,” Jonah answered, trying to look smug. Of all of us, he had the most options for friends. He could have chosen to sit with his soccer buddies at any time, but instead stayed with our little group for lunch. He regularly got invited to parties and events that I never would. Candace also had options for lunch, through her many club connections, but she was socially awkward and didn’t really fit in anywhere. Rory, because of his annoying tendency to rub his intelligence in everyone’s faces and because of his steadfast loyalty to me, was the second least-popular person of our group. I’ll give you one guess as to who holds the number one spot.
“How about you? You going?” Candace asked me.
“I never go to dances,” I replied.
“Plus, that’s Mabon,” Rory said absently. Because he was staring intently into his bag of Doritos, he failed to notice my wicked glare in his direction.
“What’s Mabon?” Sarah asked suddenly. Rory looked startled, like he’d forgotten her presence, then he glanced at me, perhaps realizing that his big, fat mouth had yet again run away from him.
‘He means it’s the Fall Equinox that weekend, and I usually spend it stargazing with my aunt. Usually some leftover Perseid meteors still visible,” I said, lamely trying to cover his lapse. The other two would never bring up Mabon, but Rory’s know-it-all reflex tended to kick in at ill-opportune times.
“Says here that Mabon is a pagan holiday, also known sometimes as the Harvest Home festival,” Sarah said, looking up from her smart phone.
“Hey, is that a Samsung Galaxy?” Rory asked, leaning forward to get a better look at her phone.
“I saw a lot of stuff in the gift shop of your restaurant. You know, like crystals and Tarot cards and stuff. You and your aunt into all that New Age stuff?” she asked me, ignoring Rory’s ploy. There was a studied casualness to her question that made me a little nervous.
“We’re into selling New Age and Spiritualism merchandise. Pretty good market for it around these parts, plus we do Internet orders. So between helping my aunt and meteor watching, I’ll be too busy to do anything else.”
“Yeah, you wouldn’t believe the hippies that come out of the woodwork around here,” Jonah said. Sarah flicked her eyes in his direction before glancing back at me. She looked thoughtful then went back to eating like a professional.
“Did you know Chuck Norris has already been to Mars?” Rory asked us. “That’s why there’s no sign of life.”
“When the Boogeyman goes to bed, he checks his closet for Chuck Norris,” Jonah replied.
I took another bite of my sandwich and chewed slowly, watching the new girl. She paid no attention to the two clowns, concentrating on eating her lunch and taking the occasional glance around at the room. Her eyes flicked in my direction at least once. Somehow, I knew that all our misdirection had done nothing more than hone her curiosity. Great. She would likely ask around and in short order, our table would be once again down to four. Probably better for her anyway.
Chapter 4-West
A little over two hundred miles to the southeast of Castlebury, a fit young man with black hair and black skin stood on a roof. Three stories above the ground, he was watching another man through expensive binoculars while holding a parabolic mike in his spare hand. His target—who was in his early twenties and was very fit, with sandy hair and hazel eyes—was sipping a latte at an outdoor table in front of a Boston coffee shop. Playing a hunch, the watcher had been tailing his quarry for three days. Another hunch told him his patience was about to pay off, as Mr. Latte reached into a pocket to grab his phone.
“Chete,” the latte guy answered. The sound was crisp and clear even ninety-seven yards away as the hunter listened through top-end headphones.
“Agent Machete, you are activated. Details follow by text. You’ll proceed to Castlebury, Vermont and investigate a Sarah Williams, recently registered at Castlebury High School. This is only a sneak and peek. Copy?”
“Copy Central,” he replied, ending the call.
Agent Machete turned and headed for his vehicle, a visible sense of excitement about him. In his eagerness, he never noticed the man on the roof.
The watcher knew a great deal about Machete, like the fact that he had been recruited right off the battlefields of Afghanistan, an advanced graduate of the U.S. Army’s school of killing and mayhem. He had been a squad leader in a light infantry unit that had drawn more than its share of dangerous building clearing assignments. The last mission had sent his unit in support of a group of special operators whose only uniform emblems had been crossed black swords over the letters A.I.R.
The building was thought to contain a high-ranking Taliban officer. It did—along with three times as many fighters as intelligence had counted on. Machete, whose birth name was Kevin, had demonstrated a ferocious appetite for combat in the fight that followed. The same fight killed off his entire squad.
After the battle, wounded in both body and mind, he had been approached by a man in a black suit, representing an elite organization focused on protecting the U.S.A. He fit their profile: a young, skil
led soldier who lacked much in the way of family or friends back in the States. Would he want to truly be of service to his country? Hell, yeah!
He died that day, at least on paper. His birth name was gone, engraved on a headstone in Arlington Cemetery. The funeral was apparently very impressive; not that he would know, as he had been whisked into a covert training program that drew its roots from the CIA’s famous Farm facility.
The watcher, also a young man, knew all this because Machete was a special project of his.
Oddly enough, he had much in common with Machete. He, too, had been a soldier in Afghanistan; a Ranger, assigned to a mixed force unit that spent months deep in the rugged mountains tracking the Taliban. He, too, had been recruited by a man in a black suit while he lay in the hospital. But unlike Machete, Michael West got to keep his own name and identity. His recruiter, who had identified himself as Nathan Stewart, had asked him two hours’ worth of questions about his uncanny ability to find the quarry his unit had hunted. Time and again, Mike had been ridiculously successful at picking the right direction, village, cave, or hidey hole to find his man. He was so crazy good at it that the team’s handle for him was Witch Hunter.
