Just a body.
He ran his forearm across his wet nostrils, straightened his torso, and headed back to the garage. The smell was baked into his skin and hair, but he couldn’t contemplate showering, not at that moment. He would shower later. He picked up the shovel from the workbench, looked over its crusty blade, and pushed his way outside. Right now, he had a hole to dig.
* * *
“What in the hell are you staring at?”
The light snapped on.
Tyler swung around from his bedroom window. He’d been looking at where the azalea bushes grew half wild against the slats of the rear fence, trying to determine whether a slight mound showed beneath the years of cast-off limbs and fallen leaves, or if that was just his imagination.
“Nothin,” Tyler said.
Creed hobbled into the room on a chrome cane. He lowered himself onto the side of Tyler’s bed, his right leg extended. A metal brace hugged his torso. “This sucks,” he said, wincing. “How’s your bean?”
“Ehh.” Tyler waggled his hand. He pulled his chair from his desk and straddled it backward so he was facing Creed and the line of band posters tacked over his bed, freebies from Chad — which reminded him he’d never paid for the Clash album.
“Jesse got his car back today,” Creed said.
“The Chevelle? They said it’d been totaled.”
Creed shrugged. “She ain’t pretty, but she runs. Gus from the pool hall helped rebuild her. Jess and me took a ride down Powerline Road. Every little rut hurt like hell, but I couldn’t lay up here another day. I was starting to lose my mind.”
Tyler nodded. “Jesse doing alright?”
“Still can’t quite lift his arm.”
“He say anything about the wreck?”
“Jesse?” Creed laughed, then winced and shifted on the bed. “Yeah, we sat on the hood, and he blubbered and poured out his emotions. It was freaking beautiful. What do you think?”
“Naw, I mean, does he remember anything?”
“What’s there to remember? He pulled out in front of some dude going sixty. Almost punched all of our tickets.”
Tyler picked at the paint of the chair’s backrest with his thumbnail. With the dream of What Happened recurring, he’d been dwelling more and more on Scott’s warning: cameras pointed at their houses, strange people watching. But in the last few days, the idea of people watching, as horrifying as it was, also seemed to link the three of them crowded together in Jesse’s Chevelle with the three of them waking up in separate hospital rooms.
Two pinpricks of light…
Headlights…
“We were being followed,” Tyler blurted out.
Creed, who had been adjusting a strap on his brace, jerked his head up. “The hell are you talking about?”
“The night of the crash. We were going out to a field in Archer, remember? You’d scored some weed, I think.” Tyler, meet Mary Jane. Mary Jane, meet Tyler. His head throbbed with the effort to concentrate. “Then, then… I don’t remember if we were coming or going… but one of us said, ‘They’ve been following us in the dark,’ or something like that. And when we all turned around, there were these headlights behind us.”
Creed squinted at him, his head tilting.
“I can’t say for sure,” Tyler continued. “But I get this feeling that the car we hit was the same one that had been following us.”
Creed grunted and lifted his cane. “I don’t know, embryo, but all this talk of pot’s got me thinking… thinking that there might still be some hidden in my top drawer.”
Tyler sighed. “Yeah, whatever.”
Creed paused in the doorway and staggered around the cane to face Tyler. “Hey, would you mind cooking us up some spaghetti? Mom’s down for the count again.” He must have seen Tyler’s frown. “If you want, I’ll whip up some sauce—”
“Forget it.” Creed couldn’t boil water. Tyler pushed himself to his feet. “I’ve got it.”
Creed raised his cane and aimed the rubber stopper at him. “I owe you, bro.”
“Yeah, you always say th—”
Another memory shot to the surface, like a red inflatable ball that had been held deep underwater. It was accompanied by a searing streak of pain. Tyler clasped his forehead. The memory wavered — no, no, no! — before resolving as the pain abated.
Tyler blinked at his brother. “They pointed something at us, like you just did with your cane.”
“Who pointed something at us?”
Tyler saw it more clearly now. “The people in the car.”
“The car we hit?” Creed’s voice grew an edge. “You’re telling me they attacked us?”
“I… yeah. I think so.”
22
Thirteenth Street High School
7:21 p.m.
Scott burst through the front doors of the gymnasium, panting from his bike ride and subsequent sprint across campus. With Scott’s mother at her new fitness club, his father had pulled the short straw as chauffeur. But not even a block from the house, the Volvo had hitched and sputtered, then stalled. “You know,” his father said, scratching his beard, “I thought it’d been a while since I filled up.”
As the gymnasium doors clattered shut behind him, Scott pushed the sleeve of his gray blazer off his watch face. Twenty minutes late. Could’ve been worse. He straightened his electric pink tie, shook down his pant legs, and hurried toward the doorway to the gym floor, where lights and music pulsed. The thought of Janis inside, waiting for him…
Just so long as she hasn’t hitched her cart to another horse.
“Hey,” Scott whispered to the Bud voice. “You’re supposed to be supporting me.”
What can I say? I’m a realist.
“Ticket, please.”
Beneath the glass trophy case to Scott’s right, three young women sat behind a streamer-festooned table. The one with blond feathered hair had upturned her hand and raised an eyebrow.
Scott swallowed. “Ticket?”
“We’ve been, like, selling them all week,” the one next to her said with a sigh. Dark hair erupted around a banana-yellow headband. The third girl, this one with crimped hair, giggled.
Scott patted his breast pocket. He hadn’t known about any tickets much less purchased one. Fresh sweat broke over his brow. “Can’t I pay here?” he asked, reaching for his back pocket. But his hand encountered no mound of wallet, just a flat butt cheek. He had changed pants a couple of times that night in nervous indecision and must have left his wallet in one of the other pairs.
Some date you’re turning out to be.
“Wait a second…” Feather Hair’s open palm turned to a pointed finger, her eyes gleaming with sudden interest. “Weren’t you the guy that, like, got paddled at Dress-up Night?”
Scott’s face exploded with heat, and he touched his glasses. “No, no, I think you have me, um, confused with—”
“It’s totally him!” Big Hair said, sitting straighter. “Remember when they pulled his pants down?”
“I’m pr-pretty sure I was never at anything called Dress-up…”
Feather Hair spun toward Big Hair. “Janis totally freaked out that night. Do you remember?”
“Duh, I was right next to you. She was a complete, like, basket case.”
“I’ll kill you if you say anything to Margaret, but I was totally, like, whew” — Feather Hair air-wiped her brow — “when Janis quit Alpha. She looked capable of murder.”
“For sure,” Big Hair said.
Giggles huddled nearer her two friends and giggled some more.
Scott raised a finger. “I’m going to go in now.”
“And then she breaks up with Blake Farrier.” Feather Hair clutched Big Hair’s forearm. “Blake Farrier. As if she…”
Scott sidled from the table and into the gymnasium. The dance committee had pushed the bleachers into vertical stacks against the side walls, and the varnished floor was all but packed. Scott rose on tiptoes, then edged his way around the court’s sideli
nes. A dim purple hue infused the gymnasium court while spangles of white light gleamed from a rotating disco ball.
He was almost to the refreshment table when he spotted Sweet Pea, his bowl cut now a mullet, pushing fistfuls of popcorn into his mouth and jawing with Jeffrey Bateman, another Gamma pledge from last semester. Scott reversed course, edging the other direction. Back at the entrance, he nearly bumped into Grant Sidwell, Gamma’s president, who was shaking hands and beaming for all he was worth. Britt, Scott’s older Gamma brother — and paddler — from last semester, entered behind him, a dizzy-looking blonde hanging from his arm.
“What is this?” Scott muttered. “The flipping fall reunion show?”
Head bowed, he plunged toward the center of the gymnasium. Maybe he’d find Janis among the growing knot of dancers. He still couldn’t believe that his phone call to her had worked, that she had picked up on what he was doing. For a moment, he’d been sure she hated the idea and was going to shut him down. But she hadn’t. She’d said yes. The temperature beneath Scott’s collar ratcheted up a few degrees as he remembered how he’d toppled over in his chair.
A student with glow-in-the-dark glasses robot danced into his view, popped an arm wave, and “passed” it to Scott. Scott tried to pass it back, but the guy had already robot danced away.
Someone tapped his shoulder.
Scott spun and found Margaret leaning toward him, her hair piled up like Princess Leia in the ceremony scene. An intoxicating perfume filled Scott’s nose. For a second, he became lost in the shifting of her sea-green eyes. Then he realized her mouth was moving: My sister gave up on you.
The life seeped from Scott’s organs. “She did?”
Margaret leaned nearer, her voice bordering on accusatory. “My sister’s looking for you,” she repeated.
“Oh, right, I’m looking for her, too.” His heart resumed beating. “Do you, ah, do you happen to know where she is?”
Scott realized how idiotic he sounded, telling the sister of the girl he’d asked to the dance that he had no idea where to find her. And after she’d caught him popping an arm wave. Margaret’s eyes shifted past him, the corners of her glossy lips turning up. She leaned in again and placed her hand on his shoulder. “I think it’s really sweet you asked her. She wouldn’t have come if you hadn’t.” She patted him and rejoined the short guy she’d been dancing with.
“Is my sister spreading rumors about me again?”
Scott wheeled around to find a constellation of disco lights illuminating Janis’s upturned face. He took in the strong lines of her cheekbones, her sensuous lower lip. And so close. When the lights swept over her eyes, their colors — chestnut and green — glimmered magically. Scott staggered forward.
“Wow,” he said. “Thanks for… for coming.”
Nice opener, pal. Why don’t you go ahead and shake her hand while you’re at it, give her your business card?
“Thanks for asking me.” Janis’s hand moved to tuck her combed-down hair behind her ear before she seemed to recall it was fastened from her face with a pair of slender barrettes. Her hand fell to the side of her smooth black dress.
Scott touched his glasses. “You look—”
“Getting down!” The deejay’s voice boomed over the speakers. “Are you having fun?” A smattering of screams answered in the affirmative. “I said, are you having fun?” More screams. “Good, because yours truly, Deejay Sweat, is spinning all the hits all night long. But now, we’re gonna slow it down for a few songs. So grab that girl or guy you’ve had your eye on and tell them, hey, I’m crazy for you. Can you do that? All right…”
The lights dimmed and three descending beats sounded from the speakers as the first slow song started: “Crazy For You.” Couples paired up, led by Madonna’s sultry voice.
“I was going to say you look incredible,” Scott said.
Nice save, Bud whispered. Was startin’ to worry about you there.
“Thanks.” Janis glanced around before returning her gaze to Scott’s. “Shall we?”
He nodded quickly and reached forward. His hands found her hips, then inched up the smooth fabric to her waist. He hoped his palms weren’t as damp as they felt. Janis stepped into his embrace and draped her wrists over his shoulders. Her body rocked to the slow beats. Scott followed her lead, trying to relax his hyperactive muscles. When she moved her face nearer his ear, her fresh scent overwhelmed him. He closed his eyes. He hadn’t thought they’d ever be this close again.
“Good call, Scott,” she whispered.
“Thanks for catching on.”
“You got your cast off.”
“Good as new.” He rotated his wrist. “How’s your wound?”
“Almost healed. Two more weeks before I’m given a clean bill.”
He nodded against the side of her head. They rotated in silence as though both were deciding how to begin the business side of the evening. Scott figured it was best to just cut to the chase.
“Mr. Leonard’s alive,” they said at the same time.
Janis drew back and stared. “How did you know?”
“I should be asking you.” Scott felt his wide eyes mirroring hers. Everything he’d had to go through to get that bit of intel — the two trips to the Leonards’ shed, the voice-activated recorder, the descrambler… And even then, he’d had to decipher code words, hoping he’d done so correctly.
Janis leaned in to Scott, nearer this time. “I saw him. We talked — shh, stay close.” She fastened herself to his shoulders until he relaxed again. “We need to keep speaking like this, in close, so no one can overhear us. And we should use our old code name for him: Nut.”
He edged in another inch and laced his fingers over the shifting muscles of her lower back. “When was this?”
“Monday.”
“But where?” he asked. “How?”
“Do you remember the fort we built as kids, the one we visited when we went back? The slab of cement you found belonged to an emergency bunker. That’s where he’s been hiding.”
“He didn’t try to hurt you, did he?”
“No, nothing like that. He genuinely wants to help. I could… feel it.” Her fingers ran beneath the back collar of his jacket. “And even though you don’t believe him when he talks about a Them, he—”
“I believe him now.”
Her fingers paused as though in question.
“I know you told me not to,” Scott said, “but I went back to Nut’s basement a couple months ago.”
“Hm.” She sounded neither upset nor surprised. She smoothed the back of his collar and rested her hands there. “What did you find?”
Scott described the operation step by step, from going into the basement to discovering the cable inside the PVC pipe, as well as the two rooms with the cots, to setting up the voice-activated recorder to retrieving it the next night to ordering the descrambler (he spared her the theatrics with Wayne), and, finally, to listening to the tape. “Oh, did you happen to go to Mr. Han on February second?” he asked. “It would’ve been a Saturday.”
“Yeah, Blake took me.”
Scott’s heart suffered a jealous punch. “Well, the voices on the tape seemed to know that — beforehand. There were at least three voices. They knew when Margaret was going to work and coming home that day. They knew about your… your dinner with Blake. They even talked about sending you with an ‘escort of one,’ which tells me they had you followed.”
Janis moved away enough for him to see the what the frick? in her eyes.
“So yeah, whatever Mr. — I mean, Nut was involved in was collective,” he said. “And it continues in his absence, apparently. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are cameras aimed at your house again but being received on a different set of monitors. I heard someone outside the shed door the night I set up the voice-activated recorder. He would’ve strolled right in if Tiger hadn’t insisted on being pet. I owe your cat. Whatever she wants — my computer, my stock in IBM — it’s hers. I’m serious.”
<
br /> “But how did you learn about Nut?” Janis asked.
“One of the voices on the tape — the same voice I heard outside the shed door, in fact — referred to him as AWOL. That’s how I figured he was still in the land of the living.”
“Did you hear about yourself on the tape or about any of the others?”
“No, but that’s the other thing. I thought I would find a switchboard in his basement, remember? But what I found was a crude telecommunication network made up of five military phones, off the grid.” Scott was acutely aware that one of his hands was holding his other wrist now and that her hips were brushing his legs. “If your family was the only one being monitored, fine. Five pairs of agents could handle that in shifts. But I’m ninety-nine percent sure Jesse was being followed too. And over the winter break, I found some cameras pointed at my own house. I assumed they were Nut’s, but now I’m almost certain they’re not.”
In the dimness around them, couples rocked gently to Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time.”
“Nut did mention something about their assignments being ‘highly compartmentalized,’” Janis said after a moment. “He didn’t even know why he was watching me and Margaret, only that he’d been ordered to. Anyway, the compartmentalization could mean that you and the others have your own surveillance teams.”
Scott pursed his lips in thought. “Makes sense — each team with their own phone network, their own surveillance routines. But if Nut was as out of the loop as he says, how does he know you’re in danger?”
“We didn’t get that far. We heard footsteps, and Nut beat it back to the bunker.”
Scott thought back to that Monday and winced. “Oh, shoot.”
“What?”
“Yeah, sorry about that.”
“Wait, that was you? What were you doing in the woods?”
“I, um…” Better shoot straight with her, pal; you know what they say about a dame’s intuition. “Well, that was the day I descrambled the tape and learned Nut was still walking and talking. I’d seen you go into the woods. I know we agreed on discretion and all, but… well, it didn’t seem so important suddenly. I needed to make sure you were safe.”
XGeneration, Books 1-3: You Don't Know Me, The Watchers, and Silent Generation Page 48
