by C. W. Trisef
“What about country music?” Ret suggested, somewhat in jest.
“Nah, I know what the real reason is,” Leo carried on. “It’s the other students; I don’t think they like me much—you know, me being an orphan and all.”
“You’re an orphan?” Ret asked in disbelief.
“Didn’t Ana tell you?”
“No,” Ret said, “I had no idea.”
“Well, now you know,” Leo said with humiliation. He stepped close to the building and, tapping on the brick, said sarcastically, “Home sweet home.”
“What happened to your parents?” Ret inquired delicately, figuring it was likely a sensitive subject. If Leo had a dollar for every time someone asked him that question, he wouldn’t still live at the orphanage. He usually based the depth of his answer on the level of genuine interest he perceived in the asker, so he would spare no details with his good friend Ret.
“They died before I was born,” Leo began, taking a seat on the lowest rung of the escape’s ladder. “Mom was eight months pregnant with me when she and Dad got in a car accident. They were hit by a drunk driver. Dad died instantly. Mom was in critical condition, so she was flown to the nearest hospital. The doctors told her they could either save her or her child but not both. And, well, we know which one she chose.”
“She gave her life for you,” Ret pointed out, himself amazed.
“She died during labor,” Leo continued. “The doctors barely got me out in time. This is all according to Peggy Sue, of course.”
“Who’s that? A relative?”
“Peggy Sue? No,” Leo chuckled. “She’s the director here at the orphanage. She’s the one who took me home from the hospital, and I’ve been here ever since. She said my folks had no living relatives.”
“I’m really sorry to hear that, Leo,” Ret said.
“It ain’t so bad,” Leo tried to say bravely, though amid a tear-born sniffle, “especially when you don’t know no better. At least I don’t have any memories of my parents; then it’d be really hard.” Ret had yet another thing in common with Leo. “Peggy Sue—she’s been real good to me. And the other orphans—well, I reckon they think I’m some kind of older brother to them. I am the oldest one in the mix.”
“Are there a lot of others?” Ret wondered, hoping there weren’t.
“We’re always full,” Leo said, almost with pride. “Peggy Sue says she’s never seen a night when a bed wasn’t being slept in. But we like it that way; we’re like a family. It’s hard to say goodbye when one of us gets selected.”
“Selected?”
“That’s what we call it when someone wants to adopt one of us,” Leo defined.
“Does that happen often?” Ret asked, hoping it did.
“Not as often as it could,” Leo stated. “There are more orphans in the world than people willing to be foster parents, seems like.”
“Is that why you’ve…never been…, you know…”
“Adopted? No,” Leo said. “I reckon there’re lots of reasons. When I was young, folks didn’t favor my story much—too much baggage, would cause too much drama when they had to tell me down the road. Some worried I’d been messed up in the womb from the crash and might have problems later on in life. Then I started growing, but not enough: I was too short, too skinny, wouldn’t be very promising in sports. Now I’m just plain too old. The first thing they think when they see me is, ‘Why is he still here? There must be a good reason why.’ Can’t blame them; no one wants a kid who’s been a stray all his life—too ingrained, impossible to fix. That’s what I hear them say, anyway. We all listen to what they tell Peggy Sue come decision time. They don’t know it, but the walls are thin.”
“Have you ever tried singing for any of them that come in?” Ret proposed. “I’m sure you’d win them over in a heartbeat if you did that.”
“Ah, singing,” Leo beamed. “My one true love. When I’m feeling down, singing always cheers me up. That song you just heard—it’s my favorite. I call it ‘A Light in the Night.’ Came up with the whole thing myself.”
“Really?” Ret said, impressed.
“Sure did,” Leo cheered. “Sometimes I get kind of discouraged about life. It’s hard to see the good in the world when there’s so much bad all the time. I watch these babies come into the orphanage; every one of them has a story, and they usually ain’t good ones. True, some ain’t as bad as others, but I reckon no story is good when it leaves a child parentless. I watch Peggy Sue take them in, one after the other, and I listen to each story. And do you know what I’ve noticed? Do you know what they all have in common?”
Ret knew, but he didn’t yet know that he knew.
“They all should have been prevented. Not one of them kids had to be given up. This one ‘has a daddy who hits’—well, dad, stop hitting. Or a young gal comes in and says she wants her precious child to ‘have a better life’—well, mom, clean up your life. Some say they’re too poor; well, I say an orphan lives in rags anyway, might as well do so with its own mother. Ironically, I’ve got the best story in the house, as sad as it is—and my mom was a heroine, she wasn’t addicted to it. But my situation could have been avoided, too: if the drunk hadn’t gotten drunk. In each case, someone was irresponsible and didn’t want to change; someone up the chain was selfish and caused problems for someone else down the road. Someone had a bad heart, and it broke someone else’s.”
Ret could feel the weight that he was running away from beginning to creep back on his shoulders. Leo’s story, with its harsh realities from margin to margin, was exactly the kind of stuff Ret was trying to escape. He wanted to forget that the world needed curing and, instead, try to live his own life.
“But there’s a light!” Leo said softly. “A light in the night!” Ret looked at Leo like he was talking crazy. And there, on Leo’s tear-strewn face, was a big smile.
“How can you say that?” Ret asked earnestly. “How can you, of all people, be so…so happy?”
“Because I’m not alone,” Leo continued to quote from his own composition. “There’re legions like me.”
Ret shook his head, not understanding.
“When dark things happen to us, we have a choice,” Leo taught. “We can either hold onto it or we can let it go. If we hold onto it, it will fester inside of us and turn us dark inside. But if we let it go, we can use its energy in a positive way to create something beautiful. Like what my mother did: something truly dark happened to her, through no fault of her own. She could have become bitter and angry. She could have been selfish and saved her own life. But she didn’t. She let go of the bad and, instead, did something beautiful, sacrificing herself for her child. She transferred that positive energy to me, and it brings me light even in my darkest nights.”
There seemed to be a metaphor at work here, but Ret wasn’t catching on. He wasn’t in the mood for interpretive poetry. If Leo could relate his discourse to science, then Ret would understand.
“So where are you going?” Leo asked, having seen Ret’s backpack.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Ret told him the truth, suddenly ready to be on his way.
“You don’t know?” Leo laughed.
“I’m going somewhere,” Ret asserted, “I just don’t know where yet.”
“Are you going to find the next element?” Leo wondered with great interest. “Has a new scar appeared?”
“If it has, I don’t care,” Ret declared coldly.
“Oh,” Leo said, deflated.
“Look, I’ve got to go,” Ret told him, preparing to head off on his way to somewhere. “Thanks, Leo. It was nice talking to you.”
“You, too.” Then, after Ret had paced several yards away, Leo called out to him, “Hey, Ret: I hope you find your light in the night!”
Annoyed by the continued metaphor, Ret shouted back, “Sure,” then muttered under his breath, “whatever.”
CHAPTER 4
SEEN AND UNSEEN
Ret’s sudden departure came as a disappointment to ever
yone but not really as a surprise. They had all seen a visible heaviness fall over him in recent weeks, so it almost made sense when they learned he was walking away from it all—or hopefully just taking a quick break from it. The girls fully expected Ret to return in no time, equipped with a new life-plan that he had outlined during his few days of fresh air. So, in the meantime, that’s what they tried to do as well: put the past behind them and live a normal life.
Everyone except Mr. Coy, that is. He had never favored “normal” very much in his life—too dull, too boring. Now that Ret wasn’t around (and had taken his scars with him), Mr. Coy had little hope of getting fresh clues to help him in his now-solo quest to fill the Oracle. He had no way of figuring out which element wanted to be found next or where in the world it was hidden, not to mention how he would collect it without Ret. In fact, Mr. Coy didn’t even know what the next element was.
But there was one piece of information he did have.
“No. Absolutely not.” He shuddered at the thought.
But it was his one and only lead.
“I can’t go back there. I won’t.”
But, no matter how many times he pushed it out of his mind, it kept coming back.
For, you see, Mr. Coy may not have known what the next scar was, but he did know what one of the next scars was. It was the scar that had appeared on Ret’s hand after they had escaped from Fire Island in the hot-air balloon and were chasing Lye’s fleet of ships across the Pacific Ocean. It was the scar that looked somewhat like a Ferris wheel, as Ret had described it to Principal Stone during their question-and-answer session that night at the Crusty Chicken. It was the scar, to Mr. Coy’s dismay, that probably shared some connection with the colorful island they saw from the balloon that day—the same island that, years before, had led to the death of his dear wife, Helen; the same island where, just months ago, Pauline, Ishmael, and Lydia had rescued Lionel and seen the brainwashed Jaret; the same island that Lye called Waters Deep.
Ah yes, that island: a place Mr. Coy had sworn never to revisit. But now, it seemed he had little choice. He could either face his fears and set sail for that Pacific isle, or he could stuff the Oracle in a box and hope Ret would return someday.
Compared to the former, the latter didn’t sound so bad.
And how appropriate! Here was yet another instance of the Oracle jamming its followers between a rock and a hard place. It had a knack for making people uncomfortable. It didn’t matter who those people were—the Oracle would find a way to test anyone to the core. It was as if it knew people—like it could read individual hearts and pick out the weak points of each. In Mr. Coy’s case, there was one thing in the known universe that he wished to avoid more than anything else—one thing that he never wanted to rehash: his wife’s death, which, as he understood it, had been caused by him. But, never fail, here was the Oracle unburying the hatchet and unstitching the wound, honing in with miraculous precision on the one thing that would try his heart like nothing else could. Had the Oracle asked him instead to climb Mount Everest blindfolded or swim the English Channel covered in shark bait, Mr. Coy would have jumped at the alternative and relished the challenge. But relive his wife’s demise? Was there no other way?
No, for such was the way of the Oracle.
Lucky for Mr. Coy, there was always something going on at the Manor to take his mind off such unpleasant thoughts. His old naval pal, Walter Thorne, had recently concluded his brief, consultative visit and promised to return very soon to get started on the grandiose project that Mr. Coy was hiring him to carry out: the installation of a state-of-the-art defense and communications system, capable of protecting the Manor from just about anything. Ever since Lye’s brazen attack on the Coopers’ home, Mr. Coy had been feeling vulnerable, and now that Lionel had labeled Ret as enemy number-one to governments the world over, he felt doubly so.
Within days, Thorne returned in his floatplane, accompanied by his son, Dusty, a handsome, strapping young man who had finished high school just a few days earlier. Thorne had many reasons for bringing his offspring along. For one, he needed the manpower. Moreover, Dusty wasn’t exactly the most motivated adolescent (for example, he didn’t have any plans for his future), so Thorne hoped his boy might meet a craftsman or observe a trade while at the Manor that would pique his interest in a field of study. Truth be told, however, Thorne knew his son had a penchant for mischief, so, most of all, he brought him along in an effort to keep him out of trouble.
By Coy’s choosing, Dusty was the guest of honor at that week’s dinner with the Coopers.
“Welcome to our home, Dusty,” Pauline told the lad after his father introduced him. “I’m Mrs. Cooper, and this is my daughter, Ana.”
“Hey, baby,” Dusty cheered as soon as he laid eyes on Ana. Thorne smacked his son on the back of his head. Mr. Coy chuckled while Ana blushed. Pauline promptly ushered everyone to the table, making sure to seat her newest guest as far from her daughter as possible.
The adults carried the dinner conversation: first, the weather; then Missy observed the approaching end of Tybee High’s school year; Thorne gave an update on his work; Mr. Coy asked if the Coopers’ home was functioning properly. There was no talk of Ret or the Oracle—just normal, boring stuff.
Paige didn’t say much at all, too busy playing with the peas on her plate. Ever since Ret left, she had taken over for him as the forlorn and fasting appendage at the table. She missed him, worried about him. And she didn’t like how Dusty was sitting in Ret’s seat.
But Dusty didn’t seem to care. No, he was busy stealing glances at Ana, who was eating it up. The two of them seemed to be carrying on a conversation of their own, communicated entirely through facial expressions. At one point, Dusty slouched in his chair to see if he could reach far enough to play footsy with Ana. The feet he found felt surprisingly large, old, and wrinkly. Come to find out, they were Missy’s.
In the weeks that followed, the Manor’s unparalleled defense system began to take shape. Like most other things on the property, it was coming along in true Coy fashion, meaning it had a little bit of everything: guns and garrisons, bullets and bunkers, tanks and turrets. The more modern antiaircraft devices stood within the crenelated battlements of yesteryear. Next to the free electron laser, which produced an energy stream sufficient to sabotage incoming missiles, Mr. Coy positioned a centuries-old cannon from the Manor’s antiques department. A medieval catapult looked a little out of place by the satellite dishes. But, as Mr. Coy liked to tell his students, “Anachronisms make for a well-rounded education.”
Of course, there weren’t any nuclear weapons on the premises; Mr. Coy didn’t want such volatile things under his care.
As the project neared completion, Mr. Coy called for a sort of hands-on lecture in the command center. This was the place that served as the gateway to all interaction with the defense and communications network. There were computers and televisions, servers and routers, and lots and lots of colorful cables. Mr. Coy liked to refer to it as “the brain,” which was fitting since he arranged for it to be built inside a protective enclosure that looked like a human skull. It sat deep within the Manor, purposely placed in a spot that would be most difficult for enemies to enter or for their weapons to hit.
Leading the group of students he had invited, Mr. Coy walked out of the elevator and up to the giant skull. They stopped in front of its two front teeth, which were actually the double doors of the command center’s main entrance. To the right of the doors, there was a neuroscope attached to the wall. Mr. Coy stepped toward it and positioned his head between the device’s two prongs so that one rested on each temple of his forehead. The doors then promptly opened. Although the students couldn’t tell, the neuroscope had scanned Coy’s own brain, a secure way to limit access into the building.
The group found Thorne on the second floor, sitting in a wheeled chair in front of an array of electronic machines. He was gazing out the nearby window, which was actually one of the empty eye so
ckets of the fabricated skull. Coy motioned for the students to fan out and peruse the room, which they excitedly did. They quickly realized this single, remote location made it possible for them to have eyes, ears, and even hands just about anywhere. For example, they could adjust the zoom on the camera at the front gate, fire a grenade from the launcher hidden in the hydrangeas, or engage the emergency mode that sealed off the Manor’s every entrance and exit. Or, by rolling across the room, they could watch live footage from one of the cameras hidden in a fake fish swimming offshore, send and receive signals between antennae on earth and satellites in space, or record whispered conversations or store written communications for later analysis. Or, they could simply watch TV, surf the web, and get some hot cocoa from the machine in the corner.
Yet, the command center hummed not only with electrical power but also with another power—an intangible force bestowed upon its users. In very real ways, the system exponentially extended their reach, both physically and mentally. They could control faraway things—change and manipulate them according to their own will. They could intercept things—signals and communications passing by. They could influence certain elements—for good or even for ill. And they could do it all without so much as leaving their chair or having to say “go-go gadget.”
In fact, it was a power that became very obvious to the students. They not only marveled at the network’s complexities but also at its capabilities. It seemed this power that they were noticing was really an umbrella that included a whole family of related powers. This was at the heart of what the students wanted to know.
“How does a satellite work?”
“What is a radio wave?”
“Can you explain the technology of a cell phone?”
“What is Wi-Fi?”
“Where is the internet?”
After hearing some of these initial queries, Thorne glanced at Coy and said with a chuckle, “These folks sure ask some meaty questions, don’t they?”
