Furious

by Jill Wolfson

  15

  “Agreed?” Raymond asks.

  “Agreed,” I say.

  “All of you. No backsies?”

  “Agreed! Wow, you’re a pain,” Stephanie complains. “For about the twenty-fifth time, we promise not to get carried away and overdo it. We promise to use our powers only for the good of mankind. That’s what my whole life is about. You want us to sign a document?”

  “In blood would be nice. With a clause about turning over your firstborn if you renege,” he suggests.

  “Raymond!” Stephanie puts her hands on her hips. She turns very preachy very fast. “I took a vow in ninth grade. I’m never having any children. You should take the same vow of nonprocreation. We all should. The world’s overpopulated enough as it is.”

  Raymond gives a thumbs-up. “Stephanie, going for the literal! What you lack in a fine-tuned, subtle sense of humor, you make up for in unsmiling solemnity of earnest purpose.”

  “He’s just being Raymond,” I translate for Alix. “He was only joking about turning over our firstborn.”

  He pushes through the double doors and holds them open in a mock-gallant manner as we exit. We’re more than ready to get out of school today. It was torture sitting through classes. Physics, trig, poetry, and all the rest suddenly seem like pointless busywork for little kids, given that we have real, substantial, grown-up work. The world is already much better with Pox in his place. We are ready to keep making a difference.

  Ambrosia is last out the door, and Raymond lets it swing closed behind her. He goes on: “I’m just saying that Ms. Pallas has a point. Self-control is a good and noble quality.”

  Ambrosia huffs in annoyance. “Control? Pallas is the one who’s a complete control freak, like most of those in a high position. Her kind doesn’t like it when young people have minds of their own. People in power don’t like sharing their power. She hates the competition.”

  Alix is in total agreement. “Yeah, Pallas does like things done her way. Teachers—most grown-ups—treat us like we only have half a brain and—”

  Raymond tries interrupting. “They do have a somewhat valid point. Teenage frontal lobes aren’t quite fully formed yet, and—”

  Alix doesn’t want to hear it. “They treat us like we can’t be trusted. Like we don’t know right from wrong. It’s a pure power play…”

  “… designed to keep the new generation down,” Stephanie finishes for her. “They want to keep the status quo.”

  Raymond again. “Far be it from me to discount—”

  This time it’s Ambrosia who cuts him off with “You can bow to Pallas if you want, but not me, not us.”

  “Who’s bowing? I’m not bowing to anyone,” Raymond protests.

  “Good to hear that,” she says, and flips her braid so that it hangs down her back almost to her tailbone. “Let’s keep walking, then. Being a Fury is not a nine-to-five job. It’s not for slackers. These girls have things to do, people to see.”

  Despite her rant about Ms. Pallas and the little snip at Raymond, Ambrosia is in a noticeably good mood this afternoon, and so am I. I’m happy to be out of school for the day and stretching my legs. I’m happy to be discovering new talents in myself. I’m happy to be surrounded by new friends. I’m happy that Raymond is so supportive. I’m happy that …

  A rumble of thunder—rare in this part of California—rolls over above us. The first big splats of rain hit me on the head. I don’t put up the hood of my rain jacket. I let the cool water soak into my hair. We run for the bus.

  I’m happy that it’s raining.

  I’m happy that I know exactly where we’re going right now.

  I’m positively and completely happy.

  * * *

  The scenario that greets us: the Leech in the living room. The Pepto-Bismol pink of her housecoat clashes with the red plaid print of the couch. She reminds me of a big, rectangular bolt of fabric tossed randomly on top of another in a fabric store. She’s chewing a big wad of gum. I see the others glancing around, taking it in. This is my home, and it’s a depressing sight. The pink bolt speaks: “What the hell is this about?”

  “Friends,” I say. “We have…”

  I have practiced for this moment in my mind. My friends have given me a pep talk, but I feel a familiar timidity taking the power out of my voice. I sense myself sliding back to the way I used to be, just yesterday. I flood with doubt. The whole thing is probably a bad idea. I could wind up just making things worse for myself. She’s not so terrible. I can live with this. I want to give the Leech a last chance. Raymond nods with encouragement, and that’s enough to help me get out the rest of the sentence. “We have some work to do, Mrs. Leach. Schoolwork.”

  With a moan she pushes herself to a seated position, fixes me like a bull’s-eye in her sight. “Does this look like a library? Do I want a bunch of hoodlums hanging around here?”

  “Hoodlum? Me?” Raymond asks. He sounds pleased by the idea.

  I’m tingling with anticipation and my fingers are jiggling by my side and my leg vibrates, like I’m the lead singer of some overcaffeinated girl group that’s standing in the wings about to perform in front of thousands. Only I’m not sure that I can go on. I’m not sure I have what it takes to be the leader.

  He-Cat enters the room. He must have heard my voice and that was enough to overcome his dread of the Leech. When she hurls the remote control at him, any hesitation that’s left in me evaporates. Poor thing is too slow. Hit, he meows in pain and outrage before scampering back to the safety of my bedroom.

  The Leech is pleased with her aim. “Worthless!”

  The cat. Me.

  Ambrosia, by my left ear, doesn’t even bother to whisper. “Justice delayed is justice denied.”

  Raymond is by my right ear. “Go for it. Just don’t overdo it.”

  I suck in my breath, and for some reason the lyrics to an old Doors song rush through my mind: The time to hesitate is through. But it’s a different first note that makes its way from deep in my belly, up my throat, and out through my lips. And another note and another and all my stage fright is gone like it never existed, and I’m singing and humming my way—our way—to the core of her.

  To where she hides in lies and denial.

  We turn loose her memories and force her to experience the hurts and sorrow that she’s caused. She tries to retreat. We don’t let go. She shivers. We shake the truth in her face. And as shame and regret for how she treats me and how she has treated others course through her, I experience the taste of something sweet and rich, like the first bite of food after you’ve been hungry for a long time.

  Satisfaction. Justice served. It’s wonderful.

  I remember Raymond’s warning. Don’t overdo it.

  This is enough. This is perfection.

  I sound the last note to alert the others and lead them back out.

  Here’s what we return to: There’s a couch. There’s the Leech in her pink housedress, and her eyes are big. “Please, please, Meg, can you forgive me? I want to change.”

  “A wise choice,” Alix says.

  “Things will be different. I promise. You have to believe me. What do you want?”

  All eyes turn to me, Stephanie’s elbow in my ribs as encouragement. The possibilities unfold. What do I want? I slide my gaze to her feet. “I don’t want to ever touch those feet again. Ever.”

  The Leech scoots her feet under the edge of the couch to hide them. The move is so quick and compliant that I realize something: I could ask her to take a hatchet and whack them off at the ankles and she would happily turn her legs into bloody stumps and then perform a tap dance, if that’s what I wanted. No questions asked.

  Of course I would never suggest that, but I feel bolder now. Ambrosia urges me with her eyes to ask for more. She’s right. I deserve more. Why stop?

  “Never order me to do anything.”

  Alix and Stephanie exchange approving smiles.

  I hesitate. Dare I? “I want a nicer room. I want c
lothes when I need them, even if I don’t really, really need them!” I turn to the others. “I can ask for that, right?” I don’t wait for an answer because I know what they would say. I’m on a roll now. One by one, I rattle off my demands:

  “The money you get from foster care you spend on me.”

  “My friends can hang out here whenever they want.”

  “The way you talk to me? Be polite.”

  He-Cat wanders back in, and when I call him by name he responds like he’s a dog and rushes to my side. I pick him up. “Another thing—the best kibble that money can buy for He-Cat. No skimping.”

  The Leech actually takes notes, writing down my wishes on a piece of paper. He-Cat purrs, and I feel like purring, too. For so long I’ve been starved for justice, and now my appetite has been satisfied.

  That is how we Furies spend Monday afternoon.

  TUESDAY

  We stand on the cliff as Alix paddles into the ocean to join the lineup of other surfers. With her mass of wild hair and a green-striped board, she’s the most flamboyant one in the water. I’m not being biased because she’s my fellow Fury. You can’t keep your eyes off of her, the way she appears everywhere, cutting back and forth. Before she left land, Alix told us exactly what to watch for.

  “It’ll happen,” she assured us. “Guaranteed. People never change.”

  “That’s right,” Ambrosia agreed. “Nobody will give you justice, Alix. You need to take it.”

  Stephanie points toward a wave that is building into a classic shape, large and rolling. The pack of surfers angles for position. Only one of them will be able to ride it, and it’s an unspoken rule that the first surfer on the wave stays on and the others drop away.

  I see the green board setting up, just as the lip of the wave begins its breaking curve. She’s at the perfect spot to catch it. Alix’s arms paddle hard and then she’s up, she’s standing. The way her hair flies behind her, dark as smoke, makes her look like a burning candle moving fast on a watery road.

  But then, seemingly from out of nowhere, another surfer drops in directly in front of her and cuts back suddenly, a motion that takes her by surprise and sends her hurtling off her board.

  Nasty. That was a mean, vicious, intentional move. She tumbles over the peak of the wave and is clobbered by a wall of churning white that comes down hard on her. She’s tossed around like a rag doll.

  For several moments we can’t see anything, and then her board pops to the surface, but it’s straight up and down, like a gravestone in the water, and we know that Alix is buried somewhere under it—who knows how deep?—connected to the surface only by the long leash around her ankle.

  Raymond grips my arm and we wait, wait, wait, until finally her head emerges, her mouth open and gasping for air. I’m so relieved. We all are. She coughs and quickly gets her bearings. She’s shook up. Only it was worth it. This is what she wanted us to see. The evidence. The culprit. The outrage to avenge. How many other times has this happened? She points to her right, stabbing her finger at the surfer who cut her off. Our target.

  “Is that who I think it is?” Ambrosia asks.

  The light’s tricky, and under the tight wet suits everyone looks similar, all the bodies appear lean, strong, and muscled. Is it someone we know?

  Ambrosia, her black hair ironed straight into a metallic sheen today, moves to a different part of the railing. She drags her hand along the base of the surfer statue. She lets it linger there, closes her hand around the bronzed ankle as she studies the moving figure in the water. “Yes, of course it is. It would have to be one of that Plague crew. They’re all like that. Every single one of them. Vicious backstabbers not to be trusted.”

  What if it’s … a name passes through my mind, and I quickly dismiss it. It can’t be him. Sure, he’s part of the Plagues, but deep down he’s not that sort of person. I know he’s not. I don’t know how I know, but I know. He wouldn’t go out of his way to intentionally hurt Alix.

  “I’m thinking,” Ambrosia goes on, “that it’s Brendon.”

  My heart pounds as I narrow my eyes and home in on more details. I don’t want Ambrosia to be right. This figure has a bulky frame. Brendon is narrower than this. At least I think he is. I hope. Brendon also has lots of dark hair, and even if it were wet and slicked back, he wouldn’t look like this surfer. I now recognize the eyes and the sneer on his lips as he paddles past Alix and flashes his middle finger in her direction.

  It’s not Brendon, definitely not! An embarrassing amount of relief whooshes through me, and I can’t contain it.

  “You’re wrong, it’s not Brendon!” I say with too much excitement. They look at me puzzled. “I mean, I know who it is. It’s Bubonic.”

  “Oh,” Ambrosia says with a dismissive glance into the water. “So it is. My mistake.”

  Stephanie waves at Alix, who again points at the surfer. I feel her anger starting to filter through me, not just from today’s injustice but from so many years of being cut off, bullied, harassed, hounded, and frustrated in the surf.

  I’m ready when you are, Alix.

  My vision goes dark for a heartbeat, and there’s an explosion and the zillion pieces that emerge from it look like dust particles, rising and falling and swirling in a shaft of light. They’re beautiful because they are pure fury and they have purpose. I follow them.

  We sing. We unravel his defenses. We show Bubonic his own greed to give him the lesson that he deserves. This should have happened long ago.

  When we’re done, I shake myself out of an exhilarated daze and land back in the here and now. I squint past the glare on the water to see Alix, pleased, sitting up and straddling her board.

  Bubonic on his board next to her folds his hands in prayer as he grovels for forgiveness.

  A harbor seal, sleek and mottled gray and brown, breaks through the surface near them, its head like a bowling ball with whiskers bobbing in the surf. I see movement around its mouth. There’s a struggling fish gripped between its sharp, pitiless teeth.

  WEDNESDAY

  In physics, two kids in our class—notorious grade grubbers who wreck every curve by getting As—rush to the front of the room and stun Mr. H by confessing that they cheated on the last test. They have tears in their eyes. They beg forgiveness, saying they can’t live a minute more with their guilty consciences.

  THURSDAY

  The three of us link arms and walk down the hall against the oncoming flow of students. We hum our song softly, work lightly, and cast our power widely but gently, like tossing wildflower seeds across a big meadow.

  Each person we pass gets the same look on his or her face, a bloom of shame. They’re remembering some hurt they caused—the time they ignored their grandma’s birthday, how they talked trash behind a good friend’s back, the way they sneaked cash out of their parents’ spare-change jar. What a flurry of regret and guilt! Everyone’s desperate to apologize and get rid of the awful feelings.

  FRIDAY

  You know that mom who seems to be in every supermarket, the one who yells at her kid, tells him to shut his mouth or she’ll give him something to wail about? And then she gives him a big smack across the butt, and the little kid doesn’t know which is worse, the sting of the slap or the public embarrassment.

  You know that mom? You know how you always want to do something to make her stop picking on her own kid?

  We did something. She will never, ever hurt or humiliate anyone again.

  SATURDAY

  This is Stephanie’s day to be in charge, and she’s very deliberate in her choice of target. It turns out to be so rewarding that she writes a blog post about the incident. Of course she eliminates any mention of our role in the course of events. Raymond and I read over her shoulder as she types her newest post.

  Green from Tenth Grade to Death:

  One Student’s Struggle to Save Mother Earth

  There are many places that make this blogger infuriated: standing in a new housing development that sits on top of fo
rmer wetlands; venturing into a redwood grove that’s been logged into oblivion; standing by a cliff that’s crumbling from man-caused erosion.

  But above all, there’s one place that instantly throws me into a state of despair and hopelessness: Surfside Mall on a Saturday afternoon.

  Today I ventured into this fortress of shameless capitalism and soullessness. My heart sank as I watched my fellow humans suckered into buying useless stupid crap. But hope showed its bright shining face.

  I was standing outside of Britches Boutique, a chain known for its complete disregard of fair labor practices and its overpriced schlocky jeans. Two twins of my acquaintance passed by, their arms loaded with bags from The Clothing Goddess.

  Suddenly their arms dropped their packages. If shame has a color, I saw it as the blood drained from their cheeks. Their faces went white with a tinge of blue, like the anemic shade of no-fat milk.

  In that moment, on the outskirts of the food court, in the artificially recycled air, standing by the fake fountain, two new activists were born.

  In impassioned, pleading voices, they recanted their ignorant consuming ways.

  “I’ve been blind to avarice!” one declared, using a word not formerly in her vocabulary. “My shopping is killing Mother Earth.”

  “Take it all away!” the other begged. “I don’t want these bloodstained goods. I can’t live with the guilt.”

  Their friends pleaded with them to stop being so weird and embarrassing.

  But they wouldn’t. As one of them explained to this blogger: “I’m so sorry that we ever made fun of you. You’ve been right all along! We need to do something to save Mother Earth. Tell us what to do and we’ll do it!”

  It was when the twins started to take off their clothing and give it away that the heavy hand of the law got involved and put an end to their brave demonstration. It took two security guards to quiet these half-naked speakers of truth.

  “You did get a little carried away with the nudie part,” Raymond says, but he’s grinning at the memory. He shows us some photos of the Double Ds that he took with his cell phone. They are priceless.