XGeneration, Books 1-3: You Don't Know Me, The Watchers, and Silent Generation

by Brad Magnarella

  What are you so worried about? said Bud’s voice again. It’s beautiful.

  Scott looked over at the exercise booklet with suspicion. “Really?”

  Look, a perfect physique is great and all — I mean, get an eyeful of this one. For a second, Bud Body’s pecs seemed to bounce inside the photo; when Scott blinked, the effect vanished. But the way to a woman’s heart ain’t through her eyes, pal. It’s more through her heart. Bet you’ve never heard that one: a way to a woman’s heart is through her heart. And that card you’re holding’s swimming with the heart stuff. In spades. Har, har! In spades, get it?

  Scott pulled the card partway out and studied his colorful, painstaking illustration. “So I should give it to her?”

  Bet your ass you should give it to her.

  “When?”

  What are we gonna do with this guy? When? he asks. Tonight, you pound of fruitcake. When she gets home.

  “Tonight?” Scott whispered, fear stealing his voice.

  Yeah, before what’s-his-name shows up with a dozen red ones.

  “Oh, right. Blake.”

  As far as Scott knew, Janis and Blake Farrier were still an item, still boyfriend/girlfriend. He couldn’t imagine anything had happened in the last weeks to put a crimp in that relationship. If anything, her time in Denver had probably fortified it — absence making the heart grow fonder and all of that.

  You’ve got home court advantage, pal. Use it for once in your godforsaken.

  Scott closed the exercise booklet and set his letter to Janis on top of it. Maybe the Bud voice was right. Maybe it was time to give her the card, to let her know how he felt. After all, their experience at the Leonards’, the intensity of it, had driven Scott to create the bold card in the first place. With every passing day, that intensity was going to waver and wane. He would lose his courage.

  “All right, Bud. You talked me into it.”

  A low hum grew from the street. Scott whipped his head around in time to catch the glow of headlights through his not-quite-closed blinds. Brakes strained softly; tires ground over macadam. Red taillights flashed as the car descended the Graystones’ street.

  “She… she’s home!”

  In a frenzy of steam and suds, Scott showered, brushed his teeth, and then dashed back to his room. He peeked through the blinds. For the first time in weeks, a light shone over the Graystones’ porch. Scott scrambled to pull on jeans, a Sam Malone-style collared shirt, and his black Members Only jacket. He combed his hair down, then pointed at the mirror. “Dream big or don’t dream at all,” he whispered, and tucked the card into his jacket.

  In the den, Scott’s father was lying on the couch, a bowl of popcorn balanced on the swell of his stomach, television glow shining across his face. His mother was sitting on the love seat, wearing the same pastel-blue skirt suit she’d worn to show a house earlier that day. Papers and shiny white “Let Us Sell Your Home” folders sat in stacks around her. As Scott speed-walked past them, J.R. squirmed out from where he had nested himself between Scott’s mother and the plush couch arm and began scratching at the carpet around Scott’s feet.

  “I’m going to take J.R. out before it gets too late,” Scott said, heading to the kitchen for a leash. The toy poodle followed eagerly.

  “Hey, they’re doing a Double-Oh-Seven on the ABC Sunday Night Movie,” his father called. “One of the Roger Moores.” Behind him, Scott could hear the night’s feature beginning to preview: a montage of explosions and clipped British accents.

  “It’s too violent,” his mother replied. “I don’t want Scott getting any ideas.”

  “I’ll, ah, I’ll be back in a bit,” he called back, his heart thundering in his chest.

  “But you’re gonna miss the beginning,” his father said.

  “Put on a thicker coat,” his mother shouted.

  Once outside, Scott stared through the puffs of his breath down the short street. He would make his way slowly, giving the Graystones enough time to settle in. But in his anticipation, Scott’s first steps felt like someone had strapped springs to the bottoms of his shoes. He couldn’t help imagining Janis through her opening front door, light glistening upon her fiery hair, chestnut-green eyes glimmering, mouth tipping into that heartbreaking smile.

  Scott patted his chest to make sure the card was still inside his jacket. He was halfway to the Graystones’ house when a car sounded behind him. Bright headlights swung around. Blake? Scott raised his hand to his eyes and edged himself and J.R. toward the curb.

  The car hummed past, a black sedan. Not Blake. The sedan rounded the cul-de-sac and pulled up in front of the Graystones’, behind Margaret’s Prelude. The lights died a second after the engine, and a tall woman stepped from the driver’s side. Her close-cropped hair shone like platinum beneath the streetlight. She looked at Scott for a second, adjusted what appeared to be a holster at her waist, and marched up the semicircular driveway, her boots clacking like a metronome.

  An odd chill seized Scott. He backed into the shadows as the woman rapped on the door. Lights turned on inside. Mr. Graystone appeared in the doorway, then stepped to one side to let her in.

  Is that the agent Janis told me about?

  Scott retreated up the hill and stood with his hands in his jacket pockets, his left one bulging around his cast. He paced back and forth to stay warm, his gaze fixed on the Graystones’ front porch. For his part, J.R. seemed content to sniff along the curb, sprinkling pee here and there.

  An hour passed and still the sedan sat out front.

  Finally, Scott’s mom emerged behind him and announced that he needed to come inside. “Are you trying to catch a cold?”

  Scott sighed. At his front door, he looked down the street once more before closing and locking the door. He’d have to settle for giving Janis the card at school tomorrow. Assuming he didn’t lose his nerve first.

  7

  An hour earlier

  Janis lugged her suitcase over the threshold and inhaled the foreign yet familiar scent. It was one of those things you never noticed about your own house unless you’d been away for a while, and she’d been away for more than three weeks. The scent carried the presence of her father, mostly — academic books, starched shirts, the varnished doors of his study. But then she smelled the refreshing undercurrent of her mother and the Estée Lauder perfume her sister wore. If her own scent were anywhere present in the domestic bouquet, Janis didn’t recognize it.

  She followed Margaret’s tall figure and shifting brunette hair down the hallway, her sister snapping on lights as she went. Their parents remained in the garage, setting luggage from the car up onto the landing.

  Margaret stopped in front of her bedroom door and turned to Janis. “Are you all right?” she asked softly.

  “Yeah, the soreness is almost gone.”

  “No, I mean being back. Being home again.”

  Janis avoided her sister’s sea-green eyes and swallowed. She wasn’t sure how she felt about being home. Not yet. “Starting school tomorrow will help,” Janis said. “The first few weeks are going to be heck… catching up on last semester, making up tests. But yeah, I think getting back into some routines will help. And I’ll be able to practice with the softball team soon.”

  Margaret’s glossy lips tensed at the corners. “The doctor said three months.”

  “I plan to heal up before then.”

  “Well, remember, I’m right next door. And if you ever have trouble falling asleep, my queen bed is big enough for two.”

  Her sister’s eyes shone with maternal concern, but not in the hard or manipulative way Janis had become accustomed to. Now they allowed themselves a certain tenderness. A certain compassion. The last few weeks had changed her sister, too. That was going to take some getting used to.

  “Thanks, sis.”

  Knocks sounded on the front door, and Janis snapped to attention. Scott? His bedroom light had been on when they’d passed his house only minutes before, the glow igniting a kind of restless ex
citement in her. She’d even thought about stealing up to his house and tapping on his window.

  “I’ll get it,” her father called from the kitchen.

  “I’m going to give Kevin a call,” Margaret said, patting Janis’s cheek and disappearing into her room. Janis remained in her bedroom doorway, aware of how gross she probably looked. Her skin felt oily. Her back itched. She needed a shower. But by her father’s clipped greeting, she could tell the person was not Scott. And though she couldn’t make out a voice, Janis felt a part of herself shrinking, like a helium balloon placed inside a freezer. Or outer space.

  Official-sounding shoes clicked on the tiles of their front hallway. Janis shivered and turned to go into her room.

  Her father cleared his throat. “Janis?”

  “Yes?” she squeaked.

  “There’s someone here who’d like to speak with you.”

  * * *

  Janis sat with her father on the brown-and-caramel couch in the living room. Agent Steel leaned toward them from one of the chairs opposite, elbows resting on the knees of her slate-blue pants. Her button-up shirt and jacket were the same color, their creases neat and sharp, like a military uniform, but without medals or insignias. Three glasses of water rested on cork coasters around the wooden coffee table, ice cubes creaking.

  “We’re working to fit some final pieces together,” Agent Steel said in her no-nonsense tone. “In our work on the Leonard case this past week, some new evidence surfaced. We hate to put you through more than you’ve already endured, Janis, but we would like to ask some follow-up questions. With your and your father’s permission, of course.” Her father turned toward her on the couch.

  Janis met Agent Steel’s lunar stare and nodded. “Sure,” she said.

  “Were you the only one in the Leonards’ house that morning?”

  Janis’s stomach spasmed. “Yes. As far as I know.”

  Agent Steel studied her, her mouth sealed in its scarred half frown. The look tempted Janis to offer up something more if only so Agent Steel would acknowledge what she’d said and stop staring at her — until Janis realized that was the whole point. The woman had probably gotten plenty of people to flub their false testimonies with that unnerving look.

  Janis gave a small, apologetic shrug.

  “We discovered some blood in the shed, Janis — on the door, the hatch, the rungs leading down to the Leonards’ basement. Analysis shows that the blood didn’t come from either of the Leonards.”

  The unnerving stare again, her blue eyes nearly colorless.

  “I was never down in the basement,” Janis said.

  “I didn’t say you were. Do you know someone who was?”

  Before Janis could shake her head and commit her first out-and-out lie of the interview, her father cleared his throat. “Isn’t it possible that the blood was left at another time and not on the morning of the incident?”

  Above her hammering heartbeats, Janis silently thanked her father. She worked on ironing out her breaths.

  “We operated under the same assumption, Mr. Graystone.” Her gaze moved back to Janis. “Until we tested the blood in the fibers of the carpet in the front hallway. Some of that blood was yours, Janis. But the rest belonged to someone else.”

  (Stay awake. Help’s coming.)

  “The same person who left evidence in the Leonards’ shed,” Agent Steel finished.

  Janis furrowed her face into what she hoped was a look of concern and puzzlement, but she couldn’t stop her eyes from blinking. Did Agent Steel already know the blood came from Scott? Was she testing her? What if Janis confessed? Her gut recoiled at the idea. Agent Steel would want to know why he’d gone into the shed and what he’d found. And Scott had found things: the logbook, for example, evidence Agent Steel and the official report had neglected to mention.

  Trust no one, came Mr. Leonard’s disembodied voice. Not even the ones who’ll be investigating what happened. Especially not them.

  “I’m sorry,” Janis said. “I wish I knew something.”

  Her father patted her back. “It’s all right.”

  Janis’s mind scrambled to map out the blood trail, to keep pace with Agent Steel. Would there have been blood on the fence, where Scott climbed over? Blood in the storm drain, a rust-colored procession leading to the bus stop where Scott told the police he’d been waiting when he heard Janis scream? Now Janis recalled that rain had fallen that night and the next. She could still hear the storm against the window of her hospital room, like a hard surf.

  But had it been hard enough to wash away blood?

  “What about this, Janis?” Agent Steel leaned to one side and, pushing aside her holstered gun, reached into her pocket. “Have you ever seen it?”

  She took out a baggie and emptied its contents — plastic fragments — across the coffee table.

  Janis leaned forward. For the first time, she unclasped her damp hands and moved one of the fragments with her finger — the oblong orange button of a walkie-talkie. She saw by the fine dust that it had been checked for prints.

  After several seconds she said, “Yes.”

  “Where?” A sliver of surprise seemed to prick Agent Steel’s throat.

  You were expecting me to deny that too, weren’t you?

  “In the Leonards’ house,” Janis said. “On the kitchen table. When Mrs. Leonard grabbed me, I managed to get a hold of it. I tried to hit her with it, but her husband took the talkie away from me. I think he threw it against the floor. I heard something break behind me, anyway.”

  Agent Steel stared at her. “That wasn’t in your earlier statement.”

  “I didn’t remember the talkie until you showed me. At the time, I was grabbing at whatever I—”

  “So it’s not yours?”

  “No.”

  Agent Steel collected the pieces. “Talkies typically come in pairs,” she said. “But we never found a match for this one.”

  “Is it important?” her father asked.

  “It’s unusual.”

  To Janis’s father, Agent Steel’s words probably sounded like official commentary. But Janis knew better. She could sense an angle of accusation to them, as though she and Agent Steel were having their own conversation — a tête-à-tête. Janis scooted nearer her father, whose steadying hand remained on her back. She reclasped her fingers, not wanting their movements to betray anything to Steel’s trained eye.

  Agent Steel took a slow sip of her water. Janis watched the angles of her jaw, the way they came to a spade-like point at her chin.

  “I’m disappointed,” Agent Steel said after she’d set the glass back down. “I’d hoped to have the investigation completed before your return, Mr. Graystone. I don’t like having to put more questions to your daughter, and I appreciate her cooperation.” Her eyes glinted like ice. “It just means we’re going to have to work that much harder. Dig that much deeper. Closing the book on this investigation is as much in our interest as it is in yours.”

  “Of course,” Janis’s father said.

  “If now’s a good time, Mr. Graystone, I can fill you in on the procedural matters we discussed over the phone.”

  Mr. Graystone patted Janis’s back. “Why don’t you go unpack.”

  Janis rose and nodded toward Agent Steel.

  “Thank you again, Janis. You’re a brave young woman.” Her scar twisted her smile into a taut grimace as she held out her hand.

  Janis took it, half expecting Agent Steel to yank her forward until they were nose to nose. I know you’re lying, she could hear her saying. And I’m going to dig and dig until I learn the truth. Do you understand me, you little shit?

  But instead, Agent Steel gave Janis’s hand a single shake, dry and frigid.

  Janis had almost reached the hallway when Agent Steel called after her. “Oh, Janis. One more thing.”

  “Huh?” Janis turned.

  “The bathroom door.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You said you broke it down with the toile
t lid?”

  “Well… I pounded and kicked it, too.”

  Agent Steel remained staring at her.

  “Why?” Janis asked.

  “We found some interesting fracture patterns.”

  “Oh.”

  Agent Steel’s eyes held Janis for another moment, then shifted back to her father. Janis walked down the hallway, her legs as stiff and flimsy as balsa wood, and closed the door to her bedroom. Through the wall, she could hear the muffled tones of Margaret talking on the phone. She heaved her suitcase onto her bed and drew its zipper around. Her hands began to shake. Janis held them together at her chest and sat beside her suitcase.

  She suspects Scott.

  When the police had arrived that morning, he had been lying in the same spot where they would later extract blood samples.

  Janis bowed her forehead to her clasped fists. She never should have gotten Scott involved in this. Would they demand a blood sample from him? She didn’t know. It wasn’t like he was suspected of committing a crime, just of being present. Or more present than either he or Janis had let on. And what about the talkie? Janis’s thoughts raced in circles as she stood. She would tell him to get rid of his. The more threads they could sever, the better.

  But what was the deal with that last question about the bathroom door? We found some interesting fracture patterns.

  Janis stopped and rewound. Was Agent Steel interested in the fact of Scott’s blood in the basement, or the means by which it had gotten there — just as Agent Steel wanted to know the means by which Janis had escaped the bathroom? Did she suspect the use of powers?

  Was she one of Them?

  Janis cracked her door. She could hear her father and Agent Steel talking in the living room. She considered opening her window, popping out the screen, and slipping up to Scott’s house to warn him, but one of her parents could discover her missing. And what if Agent Steel’s headlights found her while she was crouched in front of Scott’s window? She and Scott would look guiltier than sin, and she would have done more harm than good.

  Janis returned to her suitcase and composed her hands enough to lift out a sweater and hang it in her closet. As much as she hated to, she would have to wait until tomorrow to fill him in.