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

by Brad Magnarella

  * * *

  That night, Janis had the dream again. She lay on her side in the Leonards’ front hallway, her fingers seeking her crucifix but not finding it this time. Beyond the demolished bathroom door, Mrs. Leonard slumped against the table. The blood dripping from her earlobe had soaked her gown black.

  “Don’t let them see,” Mrs. Leonard gurgled, more blood spilling from her mouth. “Don’t let them know.”

  Who? Janis mouthed.

  Mrs. Leonard’s broken arm crunched as she jerked it aloft, the shoulder suspended by threads of sinew. Janis wanted to plead with her to stop moving, to hold still until help arrived. Hollow yellow eyes stared past her. Behind Janis came a hot draft and a march of footsteps. Janis strained to see but couldn’t turn her head.

  Not Scott, she told herself. This is not Scott.

  With teeth-clenching effort, she managed to twist onto her stomach. Digging her elbows into the blood-stained carpet, she inched forward, away from the doorway, toward the ruined hallway.

  Ahead of her, Mrs. Leonard’s eyes grew to the size of tea saucers. Them, she mouthed. Except the shadow that fell over her was not that of a mushroom cloud. The edges of the shadow hardened and assumed the form of a person: tall and solid, fists on her hips.

  “Who else is here?” Agent Steel asked. “Who else is with you?”

  Janis watched the shadow kneel. The shard twisted deeper into Janis’s side, its iciness worse than pain. “No one,” she gasped.

  “You’re lying.” Another hard twist.

  “I-I’m not.”

  The shadow stood.

  “We know who he is. We found him.”

  A body landed in front of Janis, facing her. Both lenses of Scott’s glasses were shattered.

  Janis woke up screaming.

  8

  Oakwood bus stop

  Monday, January 7, 1985

  6:55 a.m.

  Scott waited at the corner, a folded piece of notebook paper in the palm of one hand, a wooden pencil sharpened down to its final inch in the other. Both hands were hidden, buried in the pockets of his jacket. The lawn around him bristled with frost. His blue jeans were cold against his legs. The winter morning wasn’t as frigid as those in Michigan, no, but Scott hardly remembered those. He had only been seven when they moved.

  “Guess what, Scotty?” His father had slapped the dinner table with both hands, drawing a frown from Scott’s mother. “We just got a ticket to the land of orange trees and rocket ships.” When the Spruels arrived in Gainesville a month later and Scott observed neither, he was bitterly disappointed — especially about the rocket ships, which were all the way down in Cape Canaveral.

  But why had they moved? All right, his dad had gotten a contract with the local V.A. hospital to supply their prosthetics. Fine. But why Oakwood? A neighborhood where at least one resident had gone around planting cameras in streetlights, and the phone lines ran through an undeclared switchboard? It was like something out of The Twilight Zone. Looking around, Scott half expected front doors to bang open and the residents of Oakwood to emerge, zombielike, and begin lurching toward him.

  But Scott knew the residents of Oakwood — or at least who they claimed to be.

  A burgundy Cutlass with a crooked front fender approached from the Grove and cruised down the main hill. Beyond the icy window, Scott could make out a middle-aged woman with squinty eyes: Mrs. Dinkins. Scott glanced at his watch, then scratched on his paper: “Dinkins. Cutlass. 6:58 a.m.”

  The notation was not unlike the shorthand Scott had discovered in the ledger in the Leonards’ basement, denoting the comings and goings at the Graystones’ house. Scott had been using a similar system to chronicle the comings and goings in Oakwood. A larger undertaking for sure, but he’d devoted most of his two-week winter break to the project, the information on makes, models, and times going into a database program on his computer.

  Another car approached, this one from the Downs — a dirty gray Volkswagen Rabbit belonging to Mr. Clifton. Its brakes creaked at the stop sign. Scott noted the time and jotted down the information.

  Scott had been certain he would notice something in the neighborhood’s traffic patterns: strange cars coming and going, members of the mysterious Them unwittingly revealing themselves. But almost all of the cars Scott observed were from Oakwood. They chugged to and from work or errands at roughly the same times every day, a microcosm of suburban neighborhoods everywhere, he guessed. And now he was beginning to wonder…

  He raised his face to the Leonards’ house, still vaguely menacing but denuded, its curtainless windows staring blankly.

  Yes, Scott was beginning to wonder whether Mr. Leonard’s warning to Janis had been nothing more than the ranting of a man whose own wicked designs had gone horribly wrong. A man about to flee to an interstate motel to hang himself. The cameras on Scott’s house could easily have been put there by Mr. Leonard. Same with the switchboard. He’d seen telephone equipment beneath Mr. Leonard’s shed, after all. Maybe the police hadn’t been sophisticated enough to understand, much less fully dismantle, the system, which would explain why a delay still existed on his line. He would mention it to Janis when he gave her the card. Tell her she probably had nothing to worry about.

  A deep belch reverberated from the Downs.

  Yourself, on the other hand…

  Scott crammed the paper and pencil back into his pockets. He wouldn’t need to record this vehicle. He was halfway up the lawn, his Docksiders crunching through the crust of frost, when he stopped.

  He hadn’t seen Jesse or Creed since New Year’s and didn’t know how badly either had been hurt or what kind of retribution they had in mind. That they had retribution in mind, Scott had little doubt. But he couldn’t keep running from them, couldn’t keep ducking behind bushes and school trashcans — not this semester. Scott followed his own trail back to the street corner and waited.

  The chop-chop-chop of the engine grew louder. With a pair of weak stomps, Scott jarred flecks of frost from his shoes. The part of his brain charged with self-preservation grabbed at his jacket collar, demanding he drag himself across the lawn and throw himself behind cover. But Scott stood his ground. If he ran, he wouldn’t be able to approach Janis that day with any bearing. He wouldn’t be able to look her in the eyes, much less give her the card.

  Attaboy, said Bud’s voice.

  The Chevelle turned onto the street behind him, the car’s frame nicking into the asphalt. Scott angled his body away, tucking his chin inside his jacket collar. By the clunk of the brake, he could tell he’d been spotted. He blew tremulous breaths into his fists. The car idled at the stop sign. Scott twisted his neck enough to take in the blur of the Chevelle’s front end, which sat outside of the frame of his glasses. Vapors of melted frost snaked from the car’s hood.

  The car door would fly open any second. Creed would leap out first, blades glinting in the cold morning. Jesse would appear next, a resigned look on his face as he lumbered toward him, reaching for his good arm. Business is business, the look would say. A deal is a deal.

  Scott wished it would just hurry up and happen.

  When the Chevelle’s engine revved, Scott gauged the distance to his house, tensing for flight. The car revved again. With the third rev, it shrieked from the corner. Scott pushed his glasses up, following the two smears of rubber to where the car’s taillights began to dwindle.

  That’s it?

  Scott’s single laugh was almost a sob. And when a blue Toyota Tercel emerged from one of the driveways off the main street and followed Jesse’s car down the hill, he almost forgot to record the information.

  * * *

  Lunchtime

  Janis slumped in the passenger seat of Blake’s Toyota MR2 and peeked through the side window. Above the dirt parking lot, where dust swirled over returning cars, she eyed the brick walls of Thirteenth Street High, its outdoor hallways already swarming with just-fed students. From one of the upper levels, a girl in a pink jacket pointed out B
lake’s car to a squinting group of her peers, as if Janis was some rare beast of the Serengeti. Janis slumped further down and glanced at the dashboard’s clock. Five minutes until fifth period.

  “Is there a rewind button anywhere on this thing?” she asked, touching the time display.

  “That bad, huh?” Blake stroked the hair above her ear.

  “I think I preferred the attention of being Margaret’s little sister. Definitely the attention of when I was the team’s starting goalie. But this? Celebrity by stabbing?”

  Janis’s skin prickled as she remembered the crush of students who’d been waiting at Margaret’s parking spot that morning. Janis had hardly been able to get the door open before they were pressing against her, touching her arm, asking if she was all right. Margaret had made good use of her powers, ordering the students back, green eyes ablaze. But she hadn’t been there to dispel the small hordes who’d buzzed around Janis between classes like houseflies. Janis hadn’t dared stop at her locker for fear they’d swarm her again.

  “Well, you’re all they’ve been talking about for the last month, so for you to be back here, among them, in the flesh…” Blake’s fingers massaged her hairline at the top of her neck. “I think you’re going to have to forgive them their excitement. Just give them a week, and they’ll find something else to spaz over.”

  “Short of Michael Jackson’s hair catching fire again, I don’t see that happening.”

  Blake chuckled and kissed the side of her head. “At least you’ve still got your wit.”

  Janis took Blake’s other hand and squeezed. She wasn’t sure how she was going to feel around him again, having been away for so long. Maybe a little weird. But his close presence felt like a favorite blanket: warm, pleasant smelling, pleasant feeling… and yes, safe. After her latest encounter with Agent Steel, not to mention the nightmare that followed, she needed that today.

  When Blake moved his arm around her side to nestle closer, his fingers pressed against the scar between her ribs. A deep ache shot to Janis’s core, making her suck her breath in.

  “Oh, hey, I’m so sorry.” Blake jerked his hand as though he’d touched something hot. “I forgot about—”

  “No, no, it’s okay,” Janis said, the pain already subsiding. She leaned her head against his shoulder and breathed the cool leather of his jacket. “I’m mostly healed. It just does that sometimes. Nerves growing back, I guess.”

  “It’s still hard, isn’t it? What happened.”

  Flashes of the recurring nightmare assailed her senses: Mrs. Leonard, mangled and blood drenched, footfalls on the walkway, a stench, a shadow, and, in the latest iteration, Scott’s body.

  “Sometimes,” she whispered, “yeah.”

  “You know, you haven’t really talked about it. Not to me, anyway.”

  Janis kept her face nestled against his jacket. She didn’t want him to see the conflict in her eyes. There was the official version of events and then what had really happened. Only Scott knew the second. Blake, on the other hand, knew nothing. Not even about her powers.

  You tried telling him, she reminded herself. The night of the soccer game.

  “I don’t think I’m ready,” Janis said. “Not yet. I’m sorry.”

  “There’s no reason to be sorry.” Blake smoothed the hair at her temple. “I’m just worried that you’re holding too much in.”

  Janis closed her eyes. Was it wrong that she’d told Scott what she hadn’t told him? Was it wrong that she planned to tell Scott more that day? And Blake had been so good to her these last weeks, calling her in Denver most evenings (even though the long distance rate cost a small fortune), sending cards. He’d even mailed her and her family a giant Christmas tin filled with nuts, dried fruit, and foil-wrapped chocolates in the shape of bells. “Whoever this is,” her Grams had exclaimed between wet bites, “you sure as heck better hold onto him.”

  But, by no one’s fault, she and Scott overlapped in ways that she and Blake didn’t. Childhood, for one. Their special abilities, for another. And now the fallout from the Leonards. Why should that arouse guilt? Anyway, it wasn’t like she was in love with Scott. She just…

  “Hey, I have something for you.”

  Janis lifted her head from Blake’s shoulder as he reached inside his jacket. His hand emerged with a small black case. He raised his eyes before lowering them again, and in that brief glimpse, their indigo color shone large and liquid.

  He’s nervous? What’s going on?

  “This isn’t… I don’t want you to think…” He laughed, cheeks flushing around his dimples. He cleared his throat and tried again. “This is just something to show how much I care about you, Janis. A reminder.”

  “A reminder?”

  “Hopefully one that fits.”

  He eased the case open to reveal a small silver ring. Something inside Janis recoiled even as she leaned over for a closer look. Blake removed the band and, taking her left hand, placed it on her fourth finger. Even though the ring wasn’t a wedding band, his sliding it onto her finger — and looking so serious — seemed whoa momentous.

  “I hope you don’t think this is too sudden,” he said.

  Maybe it is, she heard herself saying as her heart pounded faster. Maybe we shouldn’t…

  But then his hands were holding her cheeks, and their lips were moving against one another’s, and Janis closed her eyes and let his kiss carry her from all the things she didn’t want to have to think about.

  * * *

  Scott craned his neck above the masses as he returned from lunch, eyes casting about for a singular flame of hair. He detoured along A Wing, past her locker, conscious of the card tucked inside the small pocket of his backpack.

  But Janis wasn’t at her locker. Neither had she been there before school or between periods. He considered pushing the card between the slits of her locker door, but he didn’t want anyone else around when she opened it. He wanted her to read it someplace private, where she could soak in all of the feeling he had pushed into his pen strokes.

  He fidgeted with his backpack strap as he peered up and down the hallway again. Lots of hair, plastic necklaces, earrings, and pastel-colored jackets, but no Janis. Hiking his pack up his shoulder, Scott continued down A Wing. He would try again after fifth period.

  * * *

  Janis arrived at study hall, her second semester elective, at the same moment the final bell rang. A former auditorium, the room was octagonal with a small stage at one end, where antiquated props leaned, gray with dust. The room itself was arranged into four segments by class. Heads swiveled in a wave, whispers rising to excited murmurs. “She’s the one…” “Stabbed!” “…almost died…”

  Janis’s skin prickled as though from a heat rash. Chin tucked to her books, she found a seat in the freshmen section beside the one student whose head hadn’t moved. The girl’s gaze remained glued to whatever she was reading, probably some sort of anarchist’s handbook.

  “So how was your winter break?” Janis asked.

  When Star looked up, her gaunt face, with its haunting black eye shadow, didn’t display even the slightest surprise. In fact, it expressed nothing, except perhaps boredom. She scooted over to make room at the small table as Janis set her books down and pulled out a green plastic chair that leaned off-kilter.

  “Too short,” Star replied.

  Janis could have hugged her. “Well, there’s always this summer.”

  “Ever the optimist.”

  Janis scooted her chair in, glad to feel the stares dropping off her. “At least we get to give our fingers a rest this term.” She mimed typing.

  “I happened to like the exercise.”

  “Really.”

  Janis chose not to point out that Star’s black-painted lips had gotten far more exercise than her fingers the previous semester. As Star’s attention returned to her book, Janis’s gratitude for her deepened. Finally, a class where she could feel like herself. But as her gaze fell to Star’s flannel shirt, red-check
ed and thick, she remembered what Star had told her the last time they’d spoken, about her sister. Janis’s smile thinned. She wondered whether, underneath the flannel top, she was wearing the same stitched-together shirt with the single hole between the breasts.

  (Turned her chest cavity to soup.)

  “Seriously, though,” Janis said, lowering her voice, “did you have a good break?”

  “Define good.”

  “Um, well, did you go anywhere?”

  “Nowhere as exciting as the hospital,” she said without irony, “but yeah, I did go somewhere.”

  “Really? Where?” Janis opened her folders and began organizing her notes from the previous semester. She had several finals to make up, English among them, and miles to go before she slept.

  “Our state capitol. It’s where the Florida chapter of the nuclear freeze movement is headquartered. I went to a week-long meeting and training. Reagan’s reelection was a setback, but we think this is the year we can do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “Get Congress to pass a ban on the development of nuclear weapons.”

  Janis shivered as if the mushroom cloud from her dreams had thrown its giant shadow over her. Her hand crept to the neck of her jacket and held it closed. “Is that even possible?”

  “If we keep the pressure on, hell yeah. The U.S. House came within one vote of passing a ban in eighty-two. That’s when the nuclear freeze spokespeople started contracting a strange case of bullet holes.”

  “There were others? I mean, besides your…”

  “My sister was the fifth. There’ve been two more assassinations of movement leaders since.”

  “But why?” Anger and despair competed in Janis’s voice.

  Star held the thumb and first two fingers of one hand up and rubbed them together. “There’s a ton of the green stuff in nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Just look at Viper Industries.”

  Janis thought of the commercials that aired during almost every break on every network — “In these challenging times, the security of the United States and its citizens cannot be underfunded…”