by John Conroe
I remember Aunt Ash talking about it with Darci; that poor Mr. Wilkins finally left the town and his job, amid rumors of his predilection for child porn and a shady past history of maybe even criminal nature. Somehow, I had a hard time thinking that the woman who did that would remain quiet even with the threat of federal legal action. It was only a matter of time.
Chapter 22 – Miseri
“Central, Miseri here. Any new hits on PRISM?”
“Checking Miseri. Affirmative. Subject name Sarah Williams tagged in cellular call via Verizon datalines. Standby for replay:
“ ‘…Megan? Tracy Johnson. Listen, I think I found a story you might want to pursue. A new girl has appeared in Trey’s school. Her name is Sarah Williams, but I understand she’s part of a witness relocation program, something to do with drug trafficking and murder.’
“ ‘Really. Witness relocation? Not sure about running that one, Tracy. You can get in a lot of trouble with the Feds if you mess with that program.’
“ ‘But Megan, think of the danger to our kids. You think Columbine was bad, what would happen if organized crime caught this girl in school? Professional assassins in my Trey’s school?’
“ ‘But Tracy, if I leak this girl’s identity, won’t I be making that more likely?’
“ ‘Megan, Trey says this girl is trash of the worst sort. She’s probably already dealing drugs in Castlebury High, all under the protection of Uncle Sam. It’s just not right.’
“ ‘I don’t know, Tracy. I’ll think about it. Thanks for the tip.’
“Call ends.
“Miseri, call originated in Castlebury, Vermont with a Tracy Johnson and was received by a Megan Eridoni at WCAX Broadcasting, Burlington, Vermont.”
“Thank you, Central, that’s just what I was looking for. Be advised I am en route to Burlington at this time. Reroute Agent Claymore and place a Gladius team on standby. I want complete taps on both women, including all emails and texts. Notify me if the reporter makes any noises about investigating this lead.”
“Affirmative, Miseri. Central out.”
Miseri turned off her Bluetooth earpiece and reached her free hand to the briefcase lying on the passenger car seat. Glancing back and forth between the highway ahead and the black cordura case, she managed to get it unzipped and open. Inside, rows of pristine government credential cases were lined up like stolen watches in a con man’s raincoat.
“Hmm, Talon. The US Marshals run the WitSec program, so how about a visit from Marshal Miseri for that young reporter gal? Throw the fear of God into her, or at least Uncle Sam’s attorneys.”
Chapter 23- Declan
Friday dawned with a beautiful red and orange sky. I was up early, making sure all the restaurant trash I was supposed to put out the night before was in the dumpster. Naturally, I was bogged down with my calculus homework and by the time I was done, it was so late that I forgot to put the trash out. The sound of the trash truck woke me from a sound sleep and I managed to scramble outside fast enough to keep them from emptying the dumpster before I could get the final bags into it.
Crisis averted, the truck pulled out with a wave from the driver and disappeared down the hill, leaving me a perfect view of the colorful sky. Then I remembered that sailors love red skies at night but aren’t so enamored of the same color in the morning. Looked like the weatherman was right. Storms headed our way. Weather.com said storms and rain would be starting Friday evening right through Saturday and into Sunday morning.
School was school, boring as hell for the most part, but, because it was Homecoming, enough kids wore their grade class t-shirt and generated just enough excitement to make it interesting.
School would end a little early to allow time for a parade through town that would finally arrive at the football field, where a pep rally would take place. After that, the big game, although it had been arranged so that the game was a non-league matchup against tiny Middleton Central School, which was Division III to our Division II team. Almost no chance of us losing. The grand finale would be the big dance Saturday night at the school gym. Same shit as every other school in America. Homecoming King and Queen and their courts; you know, standard bullshit.
I saw my friends throughout the day. Caeco sat next to me in every class we had together. Could it really have been less than a week since I’d met her?
Rory, Caeco, and I left together when classes let out early. Jonah was going to march in the school parade with the soccer team and Candace was walking with the Environmental Club. Of all her clubs, that was the biggest and best-funded, this being Vermont and all. She would be riding the float, which was an actual working waterfall and stream built on the back of a farm wagon to show the importance of the water cycle. Her group was going to hand out hand-sewn shopping bags made from recycled plastic tarps.
Our plan was to grab ice cream at the local Stewart’s shop and cheerfully mock our friends as they marched or rode by. Caeco was uncertain about the mocking.
“Shouldn’t we support them if they’re our friends?” she asked.
“It’s really very simple, Caeco,” Rory explained. “Our waving presence in the crowd is supporting them, while our friendly mocking keeps their egos in check and has the happy side effect of affirming society’s expectation that we’re punk-ass kids.”
She looked at him skeptically.
“They know we support them because we’re there and the snide comments are just funny. They expect it. Keeps everything from getting too serious,” I explained.
She nodded. “Oh, like soldiers do?”
“I guess. Pretty standard for any group of guys.”
With her new style, it was easy to forget that we were the first kids her own age that she’d ever interacted with. Hell, that prior to this, she’d spent her whole life inside a lab. She smiled and waved as first Jonah and then Candace went by, but stayed silent.
Rory made up for it. “Hey guys, put the telephone pole back where you found it,” he yelled at the guys around towering Jonah.
“Anybody hear a high-pitched squeaking?” Jonah deadpanned to his soccer buddies, pretending not to see Rory. The team laughed.
“Damned foot fairies,” Rory said loudly, earning himself some nasty looks from the players, all of whom were much, much bigger than he was. He smiled and waved.
“Does he always mouth off to bigger guys?” Caeco asked.
“Well, since everybody is bigger… yeah. His mouth is always writing checks his body can’t cash,” I answered.
“Hey, I can hear you guys, ya know,” he said.
“And still, you don’t learn a thing,” I responded.
The football team followed the soccer players and almost immediately, Trey spotted us among the crowd. He smiled a nasty smile and took silent shots at Caeco and I with his whole finger pistol deal.
“He looks pretty self-satisfied. He’s up to something,” I said to the others.
“Should we be worried about physical attack?” Caeco asked.
I shook my head. “More propaganda, most likely.”
Candace went by on the gurgling, sloshing waterfall wagon, throwing a rolled-up bag at Caeco when she saw us. The lightweight plastic fell short, almost into the hands of a kid in front of us. Caeco jetted forward, slipping deftly between two adults, and snagged the bag out of the air just above the kid. The boy’s mother gave her a nasty glare, but she ignored the woman and slipped back to us. I looked a question at the pretty girl who could kill with her hands.
“What? She was giving it to me, her friend.”
A flash of insight hit me. We were her first friends, and that was likely her first gift from a friend. Wait, scratch that, my amulet was her first gift. Okay, I’m not big on emotional intelligence and all that, but even I understood the importance of that.
The parade ended after the Environmental Club, so we walked back to the Beast and drove to Taco Bell for an early dinner before heading to the football field for the game.
The kickoff had
already happened by the time we got there. Caeco started asking questions as we paid for our tickets and started toward the home team’s stands.
“The announcer said Castlebury won the coin toss. Why would we choose to kick the ball?”
I glanced at Rory, realizing that this was her first football game, at least in person.
“Because choosing to receive the kick at the beginning of the second half gives us a chance to score when we might need it most. Right now, the game is fresh and morale is high. But many games are won or lost in the second half, and having a psychological edge at that point can make a huge difference.”
“Oh, so right now, there is still plenty of time, but once the second half commences, time becomes a precious commodity,” she said, excited to understand.
“Yes, but nobody our age uses the word commences for any reason ever!” Rory said.
“Right. So now Middleton has the ball and our defense is supposed to get it back, right?”
Just then, the Middleton stands erupted into cheers and we all glanced over to see a Middleton wide receiver run across the end zone.
“Yeah,” Rory said. “In theory.”
The first half of the stands was occupied by parents and younger kids. High school kids were further down the bleachers, and we headed into that jumble, looking for an out-of-the-way spot to watch the action from.
Late September in upstate Vermont gets cold, and even with cloudy, overcast skies, it was still chilly. The aluminum under my ass was cold, and clouds of vapor rose around us from our combined exhalations. Rory was chilled immediately, and when he discovered that Caeco was unaffected by the temperature, he huddled close to her for warmth. I felt her stiffen by my side, then relax as she looked with a bemused smile at our skinny friend. She must have felt my stare because she turned to look at me and then smiled again in amusement before nudging me with her shoulder.
Out on the field, the Castlebury receiver caught the kickoff and started a run, only to get slammed into the hard ground by a Middleton player, leaving us on our twenty-four yard line. From the first few plays, it looked like we should have picked Middleton’s JV team instead of Varsity.
Coach Manson finished giving final instructions to Trey Johnson and smacked him on the back as the rest of the offensive line trotted out on the field.
Johnson ran a quick huddle, then they broke and lined up. Glancing up and down Middleton’s defensive line, Trey called the snap, dropped back, and bulleted the football into Micah Issacs’s hands. Micah ran a quick seventeen yards.
“Oh, he is agile!” Caeco said with a tone of admiration I didn’t really care for.
“Yeah, Micah is easily the best athlete in the school,” Rory agreed. “And he apparently likes you.”
“Apparently,” she agreed, leaving me with a sudden nauseous feeling. “But he doesn’t know me, Rory. He likes my cover, my camouflage. I wonder how he’d feel if he knew what I really was?”
Her shoulder bumped mine again, and my stomach turned to butterflies. Rory responded without looking around. “You mean a food hoarder? A math showoff? A fashion disaster?”
“No, you moron. What I really am,” she whispered. Rory grinned at her to show her he had understood her from the start, then glanced at me, his eyes glinting in the sodium lighting.
“Oh, you mean if he knew that Declan had given you a one-of-kind voodoo amulet, handcrafted by the world’s most powerful male witch for no special reason, like he likes you or anything,” he said, his tone completely sarcastic. “Yeah, he would drop you like a red hot rock. Wouldn’t want anything to happen to his Honda Accord or his precious iPhone.”
I fixed a death glare on Rory, but he grinned back at me while Caeco’s hand came up and touched the amulet under her shirt. She didn’t look at me, but I could swear I saw a glimmer of a smile at the corner of her mouth. It turned to a frown.
“Everyone in this school knows you’re a witch, don’t they?” she said in sudden realization.
She turned to look at me, but it was Rory who answered. “Kinda, sorta, pretty much. Most people know Rowan West, mainly because it’s almost the best restaurant around,” he said, then held up one finger when I started to protest the almost part. “Admit it, Declan. Angelo’s vodka penne pasta is to die for!”
“Yeah, maybe you’re right,” I admitted grudgingly.
“But anyway, they know the rumors about Ashling, and then they know how freaky good Declan is with tech. And they’ve seen or heard enough stories about what happens to peoples’ phones or tablets or car electronics when they get on D’s bad side. The funny thing is that most people would scoff at the idea if you hit them with it flat-out, but deep down, they all believe at some level or another.”
“So they are afraid of you but nobody gets all burn the witch on you?”
“Almost everyone here was born and raised in this town. We all grew up together. It’s hard to get panicky when the evil witch gets the same grade you do or you see him hauling garbage to the dumpster when you go to the best restaurant in town.”
“But they ignore you or turn away from you?” Caeco asked.
“Because that’s what they’re supposed to do. You avoid the pot heads, you bow down to the Treys and Jessicas, and you turn away from Declan… unless you need something fixed. Then it’s a simple transaction and your X-Box 360 works better than when it came out of the box,” Rory said.
Out on the field, Trey was marching our team in five- and fifteen-yard hops down the field. We were now on the Middleton thirty-seven yard line and a touchdown seemed imminent.
“I’m hungry. You guys want a hot dog?” I asked, thinking I could get down the bleachers before the home side erupted with cheers. A light mist started falling from the thick clouds overhead.
“If you’re buying, then yes,” Rory said, “Cause I forgot my wallet.”
“Yes, no mustard please,” Caeco requested, eyes alight with the thought of food. The girl’s metabolism was a scientific marvel.
I had just made it to the ground when Micah caught Trey’s slightly too-high pass and the stands exploded as my fellow students all jumped to their feet. The concession stand was doing a steady business when I got there, so I slid into line behind some overexcited freshmen and waited my turn. When the last person in front of me took their cheese-covered fries and left, I asked for three hotdogs, changed it to four, and three cans of orange soda and an oversized chocolate chip cookie. The soda and plastic-wrapped cookie went into my hoodie pockets while I loaded the dogs with ketchup and mine with sauerkraut. Turning to go, I spotted the reporter—a blonde woman, maybe in her thirties, pretty, wearing a pantsuit and holding a wireless microphone. A veritable giant was holding the professional-grade camera and filming her as she talked to a couple of sophomore girls.
Hot dogs, prepared I started back to the stands, but veered close enough to hear the interview.
“…I don’t know the girl that got grabbed. She’s new here, isn’t she Becky?” one student said, looking to her star-struck friend for support, but only getting a giggle.
“Is this her?” the reporter asked, holding up a photo that I couldn’t see.
“I don’t think so. The girl here is like really pretty and that girl there is like not so much,” the talkative one said.
Alarmed, I kept moving, but my sudden emotion must have affected the camera and sound equipment because the reporter suddenly yanked a hidden earphone from under her short hair.
“Jesus, Clay! What did you do? Feedback about split my head,” she said angrily to the silent giant, who just looked over his equipment and shrugged.
“Never mind. Thanks for the interview, girls,” she said, turning toward the bleachers and scanning the crowd with a sharp eye.
I put my head down and moved back down the rows of stands toward the student side, a bad feeling in my gut.
Chapter 24- Miseri
The damned wind cut right through the thin material of her pantsuit, and Miseri cursed herself f
or deciding to impersonate a reporter. It had seemed like a great idea after she had finished scaring the crap out of that journalist, Megan Eridoni.
What better way to get teens to talk to you than pretend to be doing a story about one of their own? But no one seemed to know much about the girl that Machete had grabbed, except they didn’t think she looked like the photo of Caeco she carried.
