Night Sky

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “Let’s start over on 80th Street, near the old Publix warehouse,” Dana said, “where Edmund Rodriguez’s truck was found.” She gave Cal directions.

  As he pulled his car down off the sidewalk, I stared out the window at the empty streets. I thought about how quickly Old Man Dempsey had adios-ed when Milo had opened his mouth. And how easily he’d brought Dana and Cal back on track. Impulsively, I asked, “You sure you don’t have a gift too?”

  Milo looked surprised. “Me?” he asked. Dana laughed.

  “Yeah. I mean, what did you say to Mr. Dempsey? He was pretty worked up.”

  Dana shook her head and helped Milo answer the question. “He’s just street smart, Sugar Plum. There’s a big difference between street smart and Greater-Than, as you of all people plainly demonstrate.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with not being street smart,” Milo reassured me quietly.

  “What I want to know,” Cal said, “is why Harrisburg has such a large crazy-person population.”

  Dana and Milo looked at each other. Then Dana looked at Cal. “Sweetie,” she said, “these days, half of the population is out of work. The Haves don’t want be reminded that they could be next to lose everything, so they hire guards to keep the Have-Nots out of their gated communities, which shoves them all together in neighborhoods like this one—which is the pimple on the sweaty ass of Harrisburg. That’d make anyone a little crazy.”

  She shook her head. “And then you show up in your Have-ie car and your little golf shirt and your pink sneakers—and they know that the bump in price that you paid for the pink ones instead of the white could feed their families for a week—and you stand out like lost baby ducklings in an alligator swamp. And some of ’em want to stick you with a shiv because you’ve still got what they lost, and some of them just want to stick you because they like it when people bleed.”

  “But no one’s going to hurt you as long as Dana’s around,” Milo added.

  “What, do you mind-control ’em?” Calvin asked sarcastically.

  “Yeah, actually, I do,” Dana said calmly.

  “I thought you said you weren’t telepathic.” Calvin looked at her hard in the rearview mirror.

  “I’m not,” she said. “I can’t read minds. I can only—strongly—influence them.”

  “Like, these are not the droids you’re looking for?” Calvin asked.

  “Yeah,” Dana said. “Or…”

  “This is where the police found Sasha’s father’s truck,” Calvin recited, his head tilted at a slightly odd angle, as he pulled to the side of the road. But then he straightened up, shook his head, and made a face at me before he turned to glare back at Dana. “Holy crap. Did you do that?”

  She spread her hands and shrugged. “I’ll be here all week.”

  Calvin laughed his amazement, but his smile faded as he looked out the windshield. Since we’d stopped, the street had become crowded with more of the people that Dana had called the Have-Nots, most of them bedraggled and fidgety as they sidled closer.

  Cal sighed. “Okay. I’m asking you this as a man with a sturdy, intact set of balls, Dana. From what you just told us about the locals, do you really think it’s a good idea to leave my car here? I’m just saying.”

  Dana smirked. “Thanks so much for the mental pic. And I’ll let you answer your own question.”

  Calvin’s head tilted again. “No one’s going to touch my car, either. If they do, Dana’ll kick their ass.” Again, he shook his head, adding, “God, that’s creepy. Stop doing that.”

  “Just proving the point,” Dana said. She quickly reviewed the rules she’d given us before she’d told that blood-in-the-streets story. But she added a caveat to her super-mind-control abilities: her powers didn’t work on everyone. Oxycontin addicts, for example, were immune to her mental suggestions. Some jokering Destiny addicts were unreachable too.

  So stay relatively close and always be ready to run.

  I took out my photos of the Rodriguez family and handed one to Calvin. Milo reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled out a cheap printout from an online news source.

  “Let’s do this thing,” Dana said.

  —

  As soon as I stepped into the outside air, my nostrils were bombarded by smells. More of that fish odor and burning plastic, as well as a grossly overbearing amount of garlic. I tried to detect any sewage smells, but couldn’t find any. I wondered if I was overthinking it.

  Milo smoothed his printout photo of Sasha’s dad on the top of Cal’s car roof. He paused for a moment and took a pack of gum from his pocket and popped a piece into his mouth.

  “Ooh. Can I have some?” I asked, hoping the mint taste would somehow neutralize the awful stench of this city.

  “Oh,” Milo said. “Um. No. You, um, really wouldn’t like this…flavor.”

  I think I was standing there with my mouth open. Who didn’t share their gum? Of course he and Dana were probably on a more austere budget than I could even imagine. Still, “You wouldn’t like this flavor” was kinda lame. If he didn’t want to share, he should’ve gone with “Sorry, last piece.”

  “Sorry,” he said again as he backed away.

  Dana was already on the corner, talking to what looked like a group of soccer moms dressed up as prostitutes for Halloween. Except it wasn’t October, which meant…

  “Oh, God,” I said, as Calvin beeped his car locked and took a moment to situate himself and his chair on the street.

  Milo was now talking to a man who looked like Santa’s evil twin. The bearded guy was selling something called “meat sandwiches” from an old hot-dog stand.

  “What do you suppose kind of meat…” Cal started.

  I shook my head. “Don’t ask.” Although it was hard not to notice the dearth of both dogs and seagulls in this neighborhood.

  As if in silent agreement, both Cal and I turned and headed for the same group of ten-year-olds sitting on the front steps of what had once been a bank. They seemed a little less dangerous than the average Harrisburg-ite.

  But they started shaking their heads as we approached, before we even showed them Edmund’s picture—a trend that continued for the next several hours, regardless of whom we approached.

  So that was our Sunday. Or at least most of it.

  It might have been my imagination, but by midafternoon, people seemed to begin shuffling out of the woodwork again. The street was becoming more and more crowded with bodies. And nobody looked like they had anywhere else to be.

  “We’re popular around here,” Calvin noted as we showed Edmund’s photo left and right.

  “Very,” I said, as one after another of them shook their heads and shuffled away.

  We didn’t have to search out anyone at this point, because people just kept coming toward us. It was the same type of crowd one might expect on a street corner after a car accident had occurred—a little bit bloodthirsty and a whole lot of curious.

  “Keep your eyes peeled for Edmund,” I said. “You never know.”

  Calvin looked doubtful.

  We walked into the crowd. The sidewalk narrowed significantly as hands and feet gradually began to impose on my personal space. It had to be twice as bad for Calvin. Even the shortest person towered above him.

  Someone bumped clumsily into Cal’s wheelchair. “Hey!” he said defensively. Watch it, will you?”

  The woman who’d collided with him was a skinny little thing. She stared blankly at Cal, her eyes bloodshot and empty.

  “What’s your problem?” she asked, hands on her hips in an antagonist pose. As I studied her face, I realized she was really just a girl. She was definitely younger than both Calvin and me, but her stomach popped out underneath a sequined halter top. She was pregnant.

  Calvin gave up trying to be defensive. “Um…” He paused. “Have you seen this man?” he asked, and s
howed the girl the photo of Edmund.

  “What’s it to you?” she asked, all attitude. People pushed her from either side to catch a better glimpse of Calvin and me, and she elbowed them dismissively.

  “It actually means a lot,” Calvin said. “The man in this picture? His daughter was murdered last week, and we’re trying to track him down to ask him some questions.”

  As soon as Calvin said the word “murder,” the girl froze and then backed away. She waved her hands in front of her face and shook her head. “Uh-uh,” she said, “I don’t know nothin’ about a murder.”

  “It’s okay. We’re not with the police or anything,” I said as reassuringly as I could. “We’re just trying to find Edmund—this man—because we think he can help us figure out what happened.”

  But the girl had already turned on her heels. She pushed her way through the crowd, her hips swinging.

  No doubt about it, the crowd was multiplying. Calvin and I waded through the dense cloud of people, showing Edmund’s picture to no avail as it became next to impossible for us to move.

  I’ve never been claustrophobic, but I was seriously having trouble catching my breath.

  It probably had something to do with the fact that the fishy, garlic, burning-plastic smell was piercing my nostrils, now more than ever.

  Every face I saw, every set of eyes, every pursed set of lips, seemed sinister and invasive. I held on to Calvin’s shoulder. He was afraid to press forward, for fear he would roll over someone’s toes. Downtown Harrisburg had turned into a flash mob minus the cool dance routine, and we were in the center of it.

  “Sky?” Cal hollered, yelling over the din of the crowd, craning his neck to look up at me.

  “I’m right here,” I said, squeezing his shoulder, heart pounding. I could still see Dana and Milo, but they were way down the street.

  I took a deep breath, but it felt like barely enough air entered my lungs. I needed space.

  Everybody was pointing at us, moving closer and closer. Faces loomed above us, leaning over, the air thick and pungent with their foul breath.

  “Calvin,” I said, and I felt my face heat up as someone bumped into me, pushing me back and down onto my butt in the street. I had let go of Calvin as I fell, and we were immediately separated, the teeming humanity pushing forward and putting more distance between us.

  “Where’re Dana and Milo?” I thought I heard Cal say, although now I couldn’t see him. I couldn’t see anything except for faces and their shadows.

  “Calvin!” I shouted, but he didn’t hear me. A woman clutching a large bouquet of long-dead flowers loomed above me. She tried to tuck a crumbling brown rose into my hair, and I shied away.

  “Don’t touch me!” I said. But she didn’t listen. “I said, don’t TOUCH ME!”

  And then there was water everywhere.

  Not just a trickle, but a current of water sloshing and churning from the ground up, soaking everyone in its wake. I gasped, a sheet of the icy liquid slapping my face as I scrambled to my feet.

  Everyone else gasped too and immediately shrank away.

  “What the…” Cal started, as I lunged for him, grabbing his hand as the crowd vanished down corners and into alleys.

  “Whoa.” Dana and Milo stood across the street, gawking.

  The source of the water was a fire hydrant. The thing had literally exploded. I grabbed Calvin’s chair and dragged him away from the massive geyser of frothing water. Rivulets spilled past my feet, and as I pushed Calvin up onto the sidewalk, my sneakers squeaked wetly.

  “Did you…?” Calvin started.

  I nodded. “Yeah. I think so.”

  Dana started to clap. “Way to clear the area, Bubble Gum.” It was clear she was frustrated. “Dammit, we were so close.”

  “Close?” I repeated.

  As Dana and Milo crossed to our sidewalk, Milo stared at the fire hydrant as if he wanted to ask it some questions.

  “Close,” Dana said.

  “As in, someone you talked to said they saw him?” I was frustrated too. “Because absolutely no one we showed our pictures to knew anything about anyone. Of course, they would’ve denied that the sky was blue if I’d asked them about it.”

  “No, no one admitted to seeing Edmund. That’s not what I meant,” Dana told me as Milo bit at a nail. I hadn’t pegged him as a nail-biter, but he was really going at it.

  “You okay?” I looked at him.

  He stopped, mid-chew, and popped another piece of gum into his mouth. This time, I knew enough not to ask him for a piece.

  Dana took a sudden deep breath, almost like a gasp. “We’ve got to stay put for a sec,” she said, and closed her eyes.

  Calvin looked around. “What’s wrong now?”

  I spotted sets of eyes peeking around corners and from alleys. The mob may have been temporarily spooked by my exploding fire-hydrant trick, but they were all still hovering close by.

  “What is it?” I asked Dana. She stood with her chin tilted up slightly. Her eyes were still closed.

  “We’ve got to stay put for a sec,” Dana repeated.

  Milo glanced at Dana, then waited. He didn’t seem worried.

  But she was standing there like she was waiting for a message from above or something. It was very strange.

  Finally, she turned to me. “Over there,” she said, pointing to an alley.

  “What?”

  “A boy over there. Wait for him.”

  I looked where she was pointing. A little boy peeked his head around the corner. He was probably only eight or nine, and scrawny. There was dirt on his face.

  “He knows something.”

  Calvin scoffed. “Seriously?”

  “Shut up, Boyfriend,” Dana said, concentrating. “This doesn’t happen very often, but when it does, I do take it very seriously.” She closed her eyes again.

  Dana seemed to imply that it was my move, so I walked toward the little guy. His eyes were wide and white against his sunburned skin. As I approached him, he cowered slightly.

  “Hey,” I whispered. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I know. You got some food?”

  I shook my head sadly and took the picture of the Rodriguez family from my pocket. It was soggy and the colors were starting to run, but Edmund’s face was still clear. “Have you seen…?”

  The boy nodded. “Yeah. He was here,” he said, and tapped his tiny finger on the image of Edmund. “Why’d you make that fire thing explode?” He took his finger off the photo and pointed to the hydrant. The water coming out of it was down to a trickle now.

  “I was angry,” I said. “People were bothering me.”

  “Oh,” the boy said, and nodded as if he understood. “Yeah. People bother me too sometimes. I wish I could make things explode like you do.”

  I thought about what Dana had said…how I couldn’t ever tell anybody about my powers. “Well,” I explained, “I think it might have just been a coincidence. I didn’t really…”

  The boy raised an eyebrow. It made him look much older, like a miniature grown man. “Uh-huh,” he said.

  “When did you see this man?” I asked, changing the subject. I unpeeled my wet shirt from my back where it was sticking to me like tape.

  “Last week. He came here. He was crying. No one would talk to him. Then the old lady came in that van and gave him medicine.”

  I shuddered, and looked back at Milo, Dana, and Calvin. They were all huddled back a ways, staring expectantly at us. I turned back around and looked at the boy.

  “What old lady?” I asked.

  “The one with the really red eyes,” the boy said, and scratched his head. “She gave him medicine,” he replied again.

  “What kind of…” I started to ask.

  But a man came around the corner then, bellowing �
��Jeremy, get back inside, you little shit!”

  And the boy sprinted away before I could ask him anything more.

  Chapter Eleven

  “I need a Valium,” Calvin said as we drove toward Coconut Key.

  “We need to go back,” I said, shaking my head.

  Calvin looked at me like I’d gone completely crazy. “We practically got stampeded by a mob of hobos. We are not going back! Besides, I gotta get home. I know you think my mom is the queen of permissiveness, but I know when I’m pushing it, and I’ve got to do the family dinner thing tonight.”

  I sighed. The scenery outside became much more pleasant as we left the slums of Harrisburg and reentered Touristville USA. I felt sick inside, as if by leaving I was somehow physically abandoning Sasha. “But that little boy knew something important.”

  “And that’s why Dana and Milo stayed back there to look for him.” Cal tapped his fingers nervously on the steering wheel. “Seriously, Sky? I think it’s awesome that we’re trying to bring justice to whoever killed Sasha. But there’s a point where you just have to trust that the police will do their jobs.”

  “Listen,” I said, biting a nail. “If this is too much for you, then just say it. I can do this alone if that’s what you really want. If all this scares you, then you can bail, and I won’t blame you.”

  “Yeah, you will,” Cal said, gripping the steering wheel as he took the Coconut Key exit and headed for the bridge. “And for what it’s worth, I’ll tell you right now that I am one hundred percent crap-my-pants terrified. I’d be as crazy as those people back there in Harrisburg if I wasn’t.”

  I looked at him. His face was grim.

  “But if you think that I’m going to let you go at this alone,” he continued, “then you’re crazy too.”

  I reached over and squeezed Cal’s shoulder. “Thank you.”

  —

  Calvin dropped me off around the corner from my house before going back to his place to lie down. I expected Momzilla to be home and waiting anxiously for me—my phone had been shut off the entire time, after all—but when I got there, Mom’s car was gone again.