I stared at her, freaked out and repulsed. She’d changed.
I could tell now. The process seemed to be rapid—just like the computers she could hack into with nothing more than the power of her mind. As if someone had turned on a switch, she became robotic. I didn’t know how long that state lasted, if at all. Maybe she took on the quality of a machine when she was around one or when she “channeled” one. Did it matter, though?
“You and Peter?” I finally said, taking another step back. When she reached a hand out to me, I instinctively leaped away, horrified. She let her hand drop to her side.
I thought I caught the briefest flash of something across her face—a shadow of an emotion. Regret, maybe? Guilt? Anger? I couldn’t tell. Not that I wanted to.
“I’m sorry, Eric, but I wanted you to know this. You and Peter are the only real friends I have, and I trust you.” Althea managed the vaguest smile. “Even if you try to convince us that you’re no good, you really are. I’ll say it again and again ‘til my head drops off.”
I held my hands up to quiet her while backing away some more. “I’m going home. I can’t deal with this shit. You shouldn’t have said anything, Althea.”
“You would’ve found out one way or another.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and hugged myself. Not that it did me any good. Even with my jacket on, I shivered and actually felt a hollow kind of chill wrap itself around me. “I don’t want any of this!”
“You deserve to know everything. I’m sure Peter will try to talk to you, too.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass what I deserve and how long it’ll take me to understand that you and Peter are freaks!” I spat out. I couldn’t look at her again—that fixed stare, that odd, assessing look—God, it was like being in a bad sci-fi movie involving pod people. I turned on my heels and hurried away. “Leave me alone, Althea! You and Peter! Just leave me alone!”
I wouldn’t be surprised if she just stood there and watched me, that tiny smile still on her face. Instead, though, I heard, “Eric, come on!” Her tone sounded normal—plaintive and frightened, not cold—and maybe I should’ve stayed behind. Instead, I upped my speed and broke out into a full run, never once looking back.
Chapter 19
Mom’s birthday proved to be a Godsend. For nearly twenty-four hours, I was completely distracted from recent events. Peter hadn’t contacted me since, but I expected him to as long as I avoided returning his call. I was sure he’d heard from Althea by then.
Liz cooked spaghetti, and I made garlic bread. It was easy. Just take the loaf out of the freezer, unwrap it, and follow instructions. Presto. Because of our disastrous trip to the mall, Dad’s shopping got pushed back to Saturday instead, and he had to take care of that without my help.
He ended up buying a nice sweater for Mom, which he presented in a lavishly wrapped package. I wouldn’t be surprised if he paid as much for the gift-wrapping as he did for the sweater itself.
Of course, to what extent his shattered illusions of my gayness affected his decision-making remained unknown, but I must add that the sweater he picked was pretty cute. One side of me went “Awww, Dad…” The other merely inspected my cuticles, smug in the thought my dad plain got lucky that time.
As for the kids’ gift to Mom, Liz and I pooled our resources. That is, she coughed up the money for us both while I swore indentured servitude to her for a week. She had a job, after all, not me.
“Oh, this is going to be sweet,” she crowed, her eyes flashing. “I’ll give you a ‘To Do’ list tomorrow.”
“Fine, fine,” I grumbled, kicking an imaginary pebble and drooping before her. Talk about being born under a bad sign. “As long as you don’t send me to the store to buy your tampons and stuff.”
“You got lucky there, kid. I just had my girly issues. My bedroom and my truck will love you, though.”
“Whee. I can’t wait.”
At dinner, we presented Mom with movie passes and stamped certificates for prepaid movie grub.
After feasting and general merriment, I was stuck with the dishes. It was then, while staring at the godawful pile sitting in the sink, that I resolved to do something with my spare time. A good sized chunk of time had just been given back to me, I realized then. Peter and I had broken up even before we broke up. Even before our first official date, fer chrissakes! Outside my chores and homework, what leftover time that could’ve been spent with him now needed to be filled. I therefore resolved to freak out my parents and tell them—firmly, with a straight face—that I was going to find a part-time job.
I couldn’t think of a better way to cope with things.
I also couldn’t believe how many fucking dishes we used in a single day, considering how small of a family we were. Sheesh.
My hands were nothing more than a couple of giant albino prunes attached to the ends of my arms as Mom’s dish gloves had been too small for me to use.
I went to my room for some quiet time. Mom and Dad went out for a movie after deciding on Ocean’s Thirteen, and Liz was on the phone, yakking away.
It had been a while since I’d last picked up a book, so I’d hoped to indulge myself until bedtime. My new, used copy of Around the World in 80 Days stayed untouched, and I needed to fix that. I washed up and changed. Snagging the book from my desk, I made my way to bed.
Then the nightmare began. Who would’ve thought that Althea Horace—dear, sweet, smart Althea Horace of the Mystery Machine—would give the Marquis de Sade a run for his money? My old, beat up, second-hand computer flared to life on its own. The screen throbbed with a spectral blue light, which eventually quieted down to black space.
I stood before my computer and gaped as small white letters appeared across the screen.
Hey, Eric, check this out. I’m in your computer now. No—I AM your computer. Fear me.
Oh, God. Oh, Jesus Christ on a cracker. My mouth formed voiceless words for a good half a minute. Eventually something came out. “Get your ass out of my computer! This is trespassing, Horace!”
You can’t prove it.
“How’d you get here?”
Same way I got into the bank’s main computer. My brain’s connection’s growing stronger by the minute, the more I practice. It’s like, when I touch the keys, I fuse myself to the computer, and my mind becomes something like a part of its hard drive, and it moves and explores on its own.
“You’ve no idea how crazy you sound.”
I’m not kidding. Look, have you ever read ALICE IN WONDERLAND? It’s something like that when I’m connected—like I’m falling down the rabbit-hole, and I can see all kinds of things in weird flashes of light and color, but it’s really my brain that’s experiencing all these things because it becomes a part of the system—not my body. I feel like a ghost that’s haunting cyberspace. It’s an out-of-body experience, Eric. Literally. Right now, my mind’s communicating with you through your computer, while my body’s sitting at my keyboard like a mannequin. Or a corpse, if you feel morbid.
“Should I start calling you Hal?” OMFG, I sounded like a total nerd.
Hal who? Hey, listen, if you’re going to change clothes, you’d better warn me so I don’t have to watch you. Either that, or do it in the bathroom. I’ve never seen a gay boy naked before.
Reflexively, I looked down at my front. “And?” I demanded. “What did you expect to see? Two penises or something?”
Okay, I take that back. Sorry. But that doesn’t mean I want to see you naked. Peter, sure. You, no.
“Liar. You can’t see a thing.”
Okay, you got me. I was just playing. All I can see right now are flashes of light and color, like I said—just weird visual stimuli—like pulses. But I can hear things. I mean, duh, I’m holding a conversation with you right now, and you don’t even need to be on your computer to chat with me. Pretty cool, huh?
I quickly fell to my hands and knees and crawled under my desk, fumbling around for the computer’s power cord and giving it a ya
nk. Sparks flew as I severed the connection from the wall outlet, and I crawled back out, holding the plug with a triumphant grin.
Then my heart stopped for the hundredth time that day.
Nice try, gorgeous. Too bad I’m getting a real hang of this superpower shit.
“Leave me alone, Althea! Get out of here!”
What, you think I’m screwing around with something big like this? Oh, and I forgot to tell you before that you need a haircut.
I glowered at the screen. “And you need a brain transplant.”
Oh, my God. Wait, wait—look, I can do this now.
Althea filled up the entire screen with line after line after line she’d taken from one of her favorite books, The Shining. Never read the damn thing, but I’d seen the movie, and it was the line that the crazy-ass Jack dude kept typing when he was coming unglued. Those lines scrolled endlessly, just as it happened in the movie. My stomach turned. I looked over my shoulder with a shudder, half-expecting Jack Nicholson hovering behind me, wild-eyed and drooling, an ax in his hands.
“Hey, cut that out!”
LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL!
“What do you want from me? What?” I didn’t realize it until after I’d showered the monitor with a desperate spray of spittle that I’d grabbed it on each side and had begun to shake it as I would a person’s shoulders.
Dude, back off. You’re screwing up all the light pulses in here. It’s making me dizzy.
“I’m going to call your mom and tell her what you’re doing.”
Can’t, sorry. She’s out with friends, having her nails done.
I threw my hands up and walked off to find a washcloth, which I dampened with a bit of water. Then I shuffled back to my computer and wiped the screen, wondering how all this would have looked had there been a hidden camera somewhere, recording everything.
“Althea, I’m not kidding,” I said, defeated. “I’m having a hell of a time dealing with this. I need space, so I can think. Okay?”
You forgot to say ‘Simon says.’
I rolled my eyes. “Screw you, Horace.”
All right, all right, fine. I’m going. Don’t think that I asked for this, Eric, because I didn’t. It just happened, I can’t understand why, and you can’t change anything, either.
“I never said that I could.”
Oh, and one more thing. If you hurt Peter, I’m going to cyber haunt your ass. And you know damn well I can.
I tossed the washcloth across the room. It didn’t make it to the dirty hamper and landed on the floor with a dull, wet splat. I tried to avoid looking back at the monitor, but Althea was insistent, and I heard a loud beep come from my possessed computer.
“What now?” I barked, turning back to it.
Do you think I’ll look good in spandex?
I shook my head and shuffled off to bed, stooping once to pick up my book, which I’d dropped in my initial shock. I heard muffled shuffling outside my bedroom, and I looked up to see a sheet of paper peeking out from under the door. It was Liz’s ‘To Do’ list, as promised. I was apparently set to clean her bedroom and her truck for an entire week, run a few odd errands here and there.
I scowled as I read it. “Hey, wait a minute,” I stammered. “We gave Mom movie passes, not a cruise.” I whipped out my calculator. I was tempted to call Althea and have her figure things out for me, but a close encounter with a computer-morphing friend once that day was more than enough. I figured out the amount of time it’d take me to get these things done and calculated what would’ve been my earnings using minimum wage rates.
My sister would owe me, it turned out, and she’d owe me big. I set everything aside and curled up with Jules Verne. After school tomorrow, I was going to hustle my butt downtown. Hopefully a head of blue streaks wouldn’t be a detriment to my job-hunting. I tried not to think of Peter while I read, but it was hard, and I ended my day sitting in front the TV, watching The Twilight Zone. Life should come with “stop” and “rewind” buttons.
* * * *
School was uncomfortable. Peter and Althea had obviously talked because Peter kept his distance, though I felt his eyes on me the whole time we were in class. I skipped lunch and hid in the library, munching away at an illegal peanut butter and jelly sandwich while lurking behind a gigantic atlas in some dusty, neglected corner.
Art Class proved to be painful since the only available spots Peter and I could find were easels and benches that stood no more than six feet away from each other. I didn’t spare him a glance and just took my place, but, God, the hour went way too slowly for comfort. I’d hoped Mr. Cleland would walk around the room and inspect our work and stand like a barrier between me and Peter, but he didn’t. I even had a conversation rehearsed in my head in case he did.
My sketch sucked. I couldn’t focus, what with Peter looking at me from time to time. I wished he’d quit it, but I didn’t have the guts to look him in the eye and tell him off. What irritated me even more was I actually felt guilty as if everything were my fault, and I couldn’t shake the feeling off. I suppose the only comfort I got out of this was the idea I was the one who’d gotten screwed over in this whole deal, not him. He had the advantage of me the entire time—even lied to me with all his tennis lessons excuses, which I was sure were training hours for his nightly crime-fighting sprees.
The friendship bracelet on my wrist was a constant reminder of him. If my suspicions were correct, given what Peter had told me about protection when he’d given it to me, the bracelet was a tracking device of some sort.
Like one of those microchips some people surgically implanted into their pets to prevent lost animals. One could certainly look at the situation two ways—as a touching, flattering gesture of love and protectiveness or as an insulting display of possession. Frankly, I felt like a damn dog.
Sometime during the class, Peter dropped his pencil, and it rolled in my direction. Oh, great. I stifled my annoyance and retrieved it for him. That was the only time I allowed myself to look him in the eye, but I also made sure that it was a quick one.
“Thanks,” he said quietly.
“No sweat.” I turned my attention back to my drawing.
“Can we talk?”
“No.”
He fell silent, but the air felt doubly charged between us. I couldn’t stand it. My concentration faltered with all the tension, and I nearly shouted in joy when the bell finally rang. Leaping up and gathering my supplies, I hurried out of the room—even pushed my way out, when before I used to wait patiently until everyone had gone.
Peter didn’t call me back, and he didn’t follow. Thank God. I saw Althea in the midst of the tired, dizzy swarm of students looking for their lockers. She stood by a wall and watched me, but I just gave her a cursory glance before moving along. I blamed her for wrecking my perception of so many things—even school, for God’s sake. As I wormed my way through the students, I actually wondered which of them were like Peter and Althea. Mutations of some kind. Freaks. Biological or genetic experiments. The valedictorian? The homecoming queen? The head cheerleader? The long-haired metal kid? The science genius and his coke-bottle glasses? The quiet, pimply kid whom everyone ignored or laughed at? Hell, even members of the Bible Club might be affected.
I found my locker, took care of stuff, and then left.
On my way home, I steered my bike down side roads and took a lazy, meandering route back. I needed to be as far away as I possibly could from busy traffic as well as the rapidly multiplying scenes of construction all over Vintage City. In fact, traffic had worsened. Only the subway was working, the aerial train still under repairs, and now streets were blocked here and there because of construction work. Charming. So much damage done by the forces of good and evil in addition to the usual weathering of faux-antique façades. I’d hate to have been the one in charge of the city’s finances that time.
I passed by the abandoned biotech area. The desolation was frightening. It was a world of concrete and cement, weeds pushing their way out of
widening cracks and fissures on the ground, where cars used to park when scientists, security guards, data specialists, and so on, went to work there. Ugly blocks of gray buildings with a few broken windows loomed above me. I remembered The Solstice Masque when it occupied the area with its faded rides and masked attendants.
I stopped my bike and stood on the side of the road, staring at the asphalt wasteland. The carnival came every year, and compared to the other traveling carnivals and circuses, it never stayed long enough. I frowned at the scene as I worked things through in my mind. Yes, the masked carnival came at a certain time of the year, regardless of the weather, specifically marking a point in the calendar, which made me wonder about the significance.
I glanced up at the old buildings past the broken and weed-choked lot. The genetics industry—so much promise, I was told, with all kinds of hope pointed in the direction of stronger, healthier generations to come.
Althea’s Uncle Moses told his tiny, struggling family to get the hell out of Vintage City.
I blinked and got back on my bike, riding away, feeling the skin at the back of my neck prickle.
Chapter 20
The online RPG community was going through a down time of sorts. Bickering broke out for the gazillionth time since the community was created, and people slowed the game down by spending more time at The Wank House for a Magnifiman Role-Playing Shit-Stirring Orgy.
I avoided watching the news after doing my homework and, following dinner and final chores, I went to bed. No one in my family knew Peter and I were together, let alone aware we were going through some rough patches. Liz might’ve expressed openness to my having a boyfriend, but I never tested the waters where Mom and Dad were concerned, and I wasn’t sure if I should.
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