“Did you…?” she asked.
“The fort? Creed and Jesse?”
“Yeah.” She wiped her eyes. “Me too.”
Scott nodded, still reconciling the beauty in front of him with the boyish, freckled face he’d been consoling only moments before. “Why does it happen?” he asked. “What does it mean?”
“I… I don’t know.” Janis spoke as if she was still recovering her breath. Her hands held her stomach.
“This is why we need to keep meeting.”
“Janis!”
She pushed herself to her feet and wiped the seat of her pants. “It’s my father. It must be time for dinner.”
They walked single file back down the pale trunk, Janis leading. The woods to either side had fallen dim. Janis leaped off near the tree roots. “Wait a few minutes before coming out,” she said. “To be safe. And promise me you won’t go back into the Leonards’ basement.”
Scott stood with his hands in his pockets. “So this is it?”
“Yeah. For a while.”
Scott couldn’t tell whether the hesitation in her voice was from guilt or something else. She stood looking up at him as though waiting for him to speak again, her face faintly luminous. When he didn’t, she backed away, then turned. Her footfalls crunched through the leaf fall. Her figure merged with the trees. It wasn’t until she had reached the cul-de-sac and her hair shone beneath the streetlight that Scott remembered the card tucked inside his belt.
11
Thirteenth Street High Auditorium
Friday, January 25, 1985
11:38 a.m.
Janis itched and burned underneath her sweater, as if her skin had been scrubbed with poison ivy. Shifting her shoulders didn’t help. She looked from her damp, laced fingers, out over the packed auditorium, then up into the balcony, where a hundred more faces stared back at her. Beneath the stage lights, her own face felt leached of color. Crowds did that to her, too.
Principal Munshin spoke from the podium to her left, using words like “courage” and “perseverance.” Janis was too mortified to follow his oration. If she twisted her neck and looked up, she’d see a banner — WELCOME BACK, JANIS! — hanging across the top of the stage. She suspected that Margaret was responsible for the banner if not the entire assembly, but Margaret had insisted she wasn’t. Janis spotted her sister in the front row in her JC Penney best, skirted legs crossed primly. She gestured for Janis to sit straighter. Janis sighed and scooted back in her chair.
Behind Margaret, the Amy-Alicia-Autumn hydra made a show of not acknowledging Janis. Alicia rolled a strand of hair around her finger. Autumn popped a bubble of pink gum and smacked it slowly back into her mouth. Between them, Amy pretended to sleep, her head lolled back.
Finally, something we can agree on.
It felt like the principal had been speaking for two hours, though a glance at the clock in the back of the auditorium showed it had only been twelve minutes. The one saving grace, Janis thought as Principal Munshin exhaled more platitudes, was that he’d promised not to make her say anything. But upon concluding, the principal turned in her direction.
“And now there’s someone who would like to say a few words.”
Janis snapped her head around, the skin beneath her sweater bursting into flames. Oh, you son of a… But instead of finding the principal’s round face smiling toward her, it was aimed past her. Footsteps entered from stage right, solid and clipped. A part of Janis began to shrink in on itself.
The footsteps slowed, and in her peripheral vision, Janis watched Principal Munshin retreat from the podium, hands clasped behind himself. A tall figure moved in to take his place.
“Good morning,” a cold voice said through the auditorium speakers. “My name is Agent Steel.”
“Good morning, Agent Steel!” the auditorium answered in sing-song, a joke that went back to elementary school. Janis didn’t have to look to know that Agent Steel wasn’t smiling.
The auditorium fell silent.
“First, I want to echo what your principal has just said of your fellow student. Janis is exceptionally courageous and has been a great help to our investigation. And will continue to be, I’m sure.”
Janis felt Agent Steel’s frosty eyes on her. She tugged at the cuff of her sweater sleeve as the tide of applause flittered away, her sweat stiffening to beads of ice.
“The perpetrator, as most of you know, was a substitute teacher in your school system. Thomas Leonard. The chances are good that he subbed at least one of your classes over the years. In fact, he was here at Thirteenth Street High on the thirtieth of November, a Friday. Three days before the attack.”
Agent Steel gave a signal, and the auditorium dimmed. The light of a projector shot from the balcony, and Janis followed its dust-speckled beam, twisting in her seat to find an image focusing on the auditorium’s giant screen. The details of a face sharpened and blurred. Murmurs rose from the mass of assembled students. And then Mr. Leonard stared out at them, his chin dipped so that his pale brow seemed to go on forever. The photo looked as though it had come from some government ID photo, which was to say he looked like a serial killer. The image was definitely at odds with how he’d seemed to Janis in those final moments before… before…
Before he stabbed you?
Janis frowned, recalling what Scott had said in the woods almost three weeks before about the likelihood that Mr. Leonard had acted alone — Occam’s razor and all of that. Yet she was still having the dreams about being pursued by a Them, an unrelenting Agent Steel directing the effort.
Janis scanned the auditorium, row by row, until she located Scott. He was seated toward the back. Light from the projector reflected off his glasses, and for an instant, the lenses appeared smashed, made white by a million minuscule cracks. But then his lenses shifted toward her, and Janis breathed again. She wanted to nod her head, to send some signal that she saw him, that she was thinking of him, that he hadn’t become invisible to her. But it was too dangerous, especially here.
The projector died, and the overhead lights swelled.
“Obviously, the perpetrator’s death has deprived the investigation of an important source of information. So I am asking anyone who has any information about him — anything at all — to please tell me. It could be as simple as something he said or did that seemed unusual to you. And if he attempted to contact you outside of the classroom, I would certainly like to know. I will be in the front office every day after school for the next few weeks. Or, if you prefer, you can reach me at a number that your teachers will hand out at the end of the assembly. Any information you share will be kept in strict confidence.”
Where is she going with this?
Janis squinted toward the back of the audience, where staff stood along the wall and in front of the exit doors. But two men caught Janis’s eye. In their corduroy jackets and collared shirts, they looked like teachers, heads tilted in affected interest. One held his bearded chin between his thumb and forefinger. The other stood with his hands behind his back. But the cold fist in Janis’s stomach told her these were not teachers, not at Thirteenth Street High, anyway.
Janis scanned the rest of the auditorium, spotting two more men who didn’t fit, one in an aisle seat to her right, the other across the auditorium to her left. The sight of them delivered the same cold punch to her gut.
“Also,” Agent Steel went on. “If anyone has any information about the attack itself, I would be very interested to hear about that as well — no matter how strange, inconsequential, or off the wall it might seem.”
Agent Steel was managing to make herself sound half approachable, but her frigid vibe continued to envelop Janis. I’m going to dig and dig until I learn the truth. Do you understand me, you little shit? Janis fought the urge to look back at Scott, to make sure the strange men weren’t converging on him and ushering him off. Her gaze went to the Alpha section instead, where Margaret nodded her head as though Agent Steel were the most sensible adult in the world. A
licia and Autumn continued to act out their indifference.
But not Amy.
An odd enthusiasm shone from her eyes. And when she caught Janis looking at her, the corners of her lips spread into a malicious grin.
* * *
All through English, Janis watched Scott in her peripheral vision. His pen hovered over a spiral notebook as Mrs. Fern lectured. Janis had to get a message to him, to warn him that the situation was even more dangerous than she’d first thought. There was Agent Steel’s resolve, of course, and now those sketchy men who had vanished like chameleons after the assembly.
Janis chewed the top of her pen. She needed to tell him to keep as low a profile as poss—
“What say you, Miss Graystone?”
“Huh?” Janis blinked up at Mrs. Fern, whose owl eyes frowned down on her. “I… I didn’t hear the question.”
“Apparently not. And by that faraway gaze, I’d guess your thoughts were on something, or perhaps someone, rather special.”
Janis felt her cheeks go red as the classroom tittered.
Mrs. Fern held up her hand. “We were discussing Piggy’s glasses. I asked what the significance was of them being damaged. One lens was smashed, if you recall. Chapter four. What did that act herald?”
“It, um…” She shifted in her seat. “It heralded the beginning of the end.”
“In what way?”
“Well, Piggy was the… the thread. Their world was straining at the seams, threatening to spill chaos like pillow stuffing. Piggy tended to overthink things, but he was the only one Ralph could trust. The only one he could confide in.” From the corner of her eye, Janis could see Scott watching her. “When Jack broke Piggy’s glasses, it…” She swallowed. “It all started to come apart.”
“And with Piggy’s untimely death,” Mrs. Fern said gravely, “come apart it did. Their world became an inferno.”
After class, Janis shuffled down A Wing, toward her locker. Scott was ahead of her. She watched him turn a corner, his glasses glinting in the sun, and disappear. She considered running to catch up, but she’d already asked him to trust her intuition. What more could she tell him? To lay even lower?
She regarded the white laces of her Keds, the way they flopped back and forth. She only realized how slowly she was walking when the clacking of three pairs of heels caught up with her. Janis recognized their owners’ voices, but it was too late to outpace them. When the shoes were nearly at Janis’s heels, Amy’s voice became unnaturally loud.
“Oh, do you mind telling my mom I’ll be a few minutes late?”
“Where are you going?” Janis couldn’t tell whether it was Alicia or Autumn.
“To the front office.” Like a pageant contestant, Amy was being careful to enunciate every syllable. “I’m going to have a chat with this Agent Steel. I think I have some information she might be interested in.”
A feverish heat broke throughout Janis’s body, but she kept walking.
“Seriously?” Alicia or Autumn asked.
“She said no matter how strange or seemingly inconsequential, right?”
Janis stepped aside and, with her books balanced across her thigh, knelt as though she needed to tie one of her shoes. When the three A’s had clacked past, Janis followed them at a distance, her heart racing. She’s just bluffing, right? They trotted up the steps to the front office. Using a steel column for cover, Janis peeked around. The three A’s air kissed, and Alicia and Autumn headed toward the auditorium. Amy remained behind, shifting her weight from foot to foot. When Janis stepped from behind the column, Amy started, then quickly averted her gaze. She began to pull the door to the front office open.
“Hey!” Janis called.
Amy paused and turned. Her eyes widened in a show of pleasant surprise. “Oh, I was just going inside to visit your friend,” she said as Janis came up the stairs, two at a time.
“What’s going on?” Janis asked. “What are you doing?”
“What do you mean? I’m doing my civic duty. I’m helping with an investigation.”
Janis glanced through the door’s glass window and saw several students standing in line to use the front office phone. “What are you planning to tell her?”
“I’m afraid that’s between me and Agent Steel. ‘Strictly confidential,’ remember?”
Janis felt her nostrils flaring around her escalating breaths.
“Is there a problem?” Amy eased the door open.
She’s bluffing.
Amy shrugged at Janis’s silence and began to step into the front office.
“Wait a minute,” Janis said in a low voice. Amy backed out of the doorway, eyebrows arched, but her fingers still hooking the door handle. “There’s much more going on here than you realize, Amy. More than you could possibly understand. I said I was sorry for what happened. Just let it go.”
When Amy grinned, something hard shone in her brown eyes. “Did you know I tore a ligament? Did you know I spent three weeks on crutches? Did you know that, because of you, I was passed on for the mall’s Christmas ads? They gave my spot to Rita Kuntz.” Amy spat out the name as though Janis would sympathize. Janis had no idea who Rita Kuntz was. “The photographer said that, even without the bandage, my swollen ankle compromised the shots, made my poses seem unnatural. I needed those shots for my portfolio.”
Tears quivered in Amy’s eyes, and in their distortion, Janis glimpsed something else. A furtive shadow. But she didn’t have time to look closer. “All I can say is I’m sorry,” Janis said. And she was sorry.
“The thing that hit me, that blast. How did you do it?”
“What are you talking about?” Janis asked, wrinkling her brow.
Amy went to pull the door wide again, but Janis’s foot blocked it. “I don’t know,” she said quickly. “I don’t know how I did it. What do you want me to say? What do you want from me?” She couldn’t keep the tears from her own voice. There was so much at stake.
Amy studied her face for a moment. Slowly, the pressure eased from Janis’s foot. The door closed.
“I want you to know defeat for once, Miss Perfect.”
“Defeat?” And where was this “Miss Perfect” coming from?
“I’ll keep what happened between us,” Amy said, “but you have to do what I say.”
What are we, in the fifth grade again?
A gaggle of students exited the front office, passing between them. Through the closing door, Janis spotted Agent Steel entering the front office from the parking lot. Janis jerked back until she was hidden by the building’s brick edifice and then waited for the students to recede from earshot.
“And what’s that?” Janis asked.
Amy grinned as her eyes fell to Janis’s ring. “For starters, I want you to break up with him.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“Amy, there’s no way…”
“You have a week from this coming Monday.”
She must have read Janis’s incredulous silence as acceptance because she released the door handle and began walking toward the auditorium, her brunette hair flipping side to side with each peppy step. “Just be sure to let him down easy,” she sang over her shoulder. “Or on second thought, don’t. He’ll be keener to rebound.”
The odd, trilling laughter that trailed off behind Amy told Janis that her ex-best friend wasn’t toying with her.
She was dead serious.
12
Spruel household
Saturday, February 2, 1985
1:08 a.m.
Scott slipped over his sill and closed the window behind him. He’d taken care to WD-40 the track earlier in the evening, so the window slid smoothly. Juniper bushes concealed him where he ducked. The night was dark, which helped — just a sliver of moon. The only light-colored clothing on Scott’s body was his underwear. He retucked his black hooded sweatshirt into the darkest pair of pants he’d been able to find and cinched the belt tight.
Now for the camera.
&nb
sp; Probably a Leonard leftover, but still. Better to play it safe.
Crouching lower, Scott unzipped his JanSport and pulled out the laser helmet. Wires ran from a new power supply to the car battery, which nested in the bottom of the backpack. The metal harness was sitting on a shelf in his metal shop — too bulky for covertness.
Yep, he was on another stealth mission.
Hey pal, he heard the Bud voice saying. Pull these shorts of mine down in back, and maybe you’ll find a needle stick or two. I mean, I’m not saying I juiced, but I’m not saying I didn’t, if you follow. What I am saying is that sometimes you gots to do what you gots to do.
“Yeah, whatever,” Scott whispered.
But Bud had a point. Whenever it came to Janis, Bud seemed to have a point — several of them, whether Scott wanted to hear them or not. In fact, it was the Bud voice that had prodded Scott into action. His isolation from Janis these last weeks had been torture. He, along with Bud, reasoned that if he could identify the Leonard house as the source of the surveillance — phone, video, the whole shebang — then his and Janis’s relationship could resume. They could explore their powers again and become like Cyclops and Jean Grey, maybe.
And what better time than the present, his left arm fresh from its cast.
Scott pulled the helmet down over his ears, then made an adjustment to an add-on he’d built that week — a metal slider that controlled the amount of beam emitted — and clicked on the power. The juniper bushes flickered. A pencil-thin beam shot from the helmet. Scott raised his head until the red beam pierced the bulb of the streetlight. He concentrated on the near end of the beam, watching the orb in his mind’s eye turn from red to orange.
Steadying the helmet with both hands, he let go, feeling the pulse speed the length of the beam. The streetlight shattered with a hollow pop. Scott cringed as glass tinkled onto the pavement.
So much for stealth.
He cut the laser and stowed the helmet back inside his pack, mostly by feel. Without the streetlight, the yard had become midnight dark. He hefted the pack over his shoulder, paused for a breath, and stole around the bushes, down toward the street. At the storm drain, he slid in feet first.
XGeneration, Books 1-3: You Don't Know Me, The Watchers, and Silent Generation Page 39
