CHAPTER NINE
I hated to admit it, but Mallory Nassif had gotten to me. Inviting me to join some secret group, but not giving me the details, was, I’m sure, supposed to make me insanely curious, and it worked. The next day, I found myself thinking about what she’d said. What if this was some type of dark cult? Would there be blood oaths or black robes? What if her group did things that were illegal? Or maybe she was messing with me and there was no group. It could all be a big practical joke. My mind whirred with all the possibilities, making me distracted during class.
“Mr. Becker, would you like to join our discussion?” Ms. Birnbaum asked. It was one of those smart-ass questions teachers use that I really hate. Along with: Would you care to let the rest of us in on the joke? and Are we interrupting your sleep? Teachers think they’re being clever, but the truth is, it’s just annoying. If students could answer the way they wanted to they’d say, No I don’t want to join the class discussion because frankly, it sucks. And if I wanted to let you all in on the joke, I would have done it already. Finally, yes, you are interrupting my sleep. Could you keep it down?
Maybe I was just in a mood. Lack of sleep will do that to you.
I looked for Mallory between classes and spotted her a few times, walking down the halls. I saw her at lunch too. She was always with at least one other girl, so I couldn’t talk to her. I’ve noticed that girls always travel in packs if they have a choice. Today, like every other day, Mallory’s hair was pulled back in her usual ponytail. I heard her burst out laughing at one point and it made me smile. Her laughter was explosive and happy-sounding. No one could duplicate that noise if they tried.
I finally caught her eye at the end of the day. I was getting something out of my locker when she walked past with Amelia Schuster. Amelia was talking a mile a minute and gesturing wildly, and Mallory was nodding like she totally agreed with everything she said. As they approached I reached out to get Mallory’s attention, but she shook her head like, not here. Funny how I was able to read so much into that one gesture. I would have felt like she was giving me the brush-off if not for what she did next. She winked at me, and then grinned. It was fast, over in a split second. I was the only one who saw it, which made it kind of cool.
I started almost obsessively checking my phone for the directions to the meeting place once I got home. I got a few other texts, but nothing from Mallory. I went from thinking I wasn’t going to meet her secret group at the secret place, to being afraid she wasn’t going to follow through. What if my reluctance kept me out of the group? Wouldn’t that be a hell of a thing?
Dinner with my folks that evening consisted of meatloaf and a salad. I poured a lot of ketchup on the meatloaf to offset the dryness, and when I looked up I caught my parents exchanging an amused look. “Meatloaf not to your liking, Russ?” my dad asked.
“Nope, it’s fine,” I said.
My mom changed the subject. “Did I tell you Frank is spending the weekend here?”
Inwardly I groaned. This was very bad news. Frank was my sister Carly’s son. My nephew. His full name was Frank Shrapnel Becker, if you can believe it. My sister wanted to give him a tough guy name. This was during her biker chick phase. The phase passed, but the poor kid was saddled with the name Frank Shrapnel forever. Unbelievable. Comparatively speaking, my middle name “David,” which was kind of boring, was preferable.
Frank spent so much time at our house it was like we shared custody. He was really cute when he was little. Back then my mom did most of the caretaking. Now that he was ten, he’d latched onto me, following me around the house talking nonstop and asking a million questions. Sometimes it was cool. The kid was pretty good at video games and sometimes I was up for that. Lately not so much.
“No, you didn’t tell me that,” I said. “What’s the story?”
“What do you mean, what’s the story?”
“Why is he coming over?”
My mom gave me a slight frown. “He’s our grandson. Does there have to be a reason?”
“Carly is going to some enlightenment workshop,” my dad said. “Her new boyfriend is some new age guru.”
I took a sip of my milk. “I hope you don’t think I’m going to be entertaining him. I have a lot of plans for the weekend.” Or at least I would have plans, now that I knew.
“Don’t be that way, Russ,” Mom said. “He adores you. All he wants is a little attention. Is that asking too much?”
“His mother should be the one paying attention,” I said. “She can’t wait to get rid of him.”
My mom looked like I’d slapped her, and I immediately regretted saying it. Carly was a crappy mother, but it wasn’t my parents’ fault. They’d set a good example. She just chose not to follow it.
“Regardless,” Dad said. “Frank shouldn’t be punished for her lack of maternal instincts. Mom and I are going to take him to a movie and to the mall, but we can’t keep him occupied the whole time. We’d like your help.”
“We really do appreciate it,” Mom added. I believed her. They did appreciate my help. It was my flaky sister who expected everything and appreciated nothing. When Frank was a baby, she dumped him at our house every chance she could. It got to be less as the years went on, but he still spent a fair share of his time here.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll hang out with the kid.”
After dinner I cleared the table for my mom, then went upstairs for the night. I checked my phone constantly. Just after eight, when I’d almost given up hope, I was rewarded with a text from Mallory. She said: “Important meet-up at midnight behind the ball bearing factory. 276 Industry Drive. See you there.”
Now that I got the message, I started to have funny feelings about the whole thing. The thing that bothered me was the location. I knew Industry Drive. It was part of my route. I had no idea there was a ball bearing factory there. You learn something new every day. If she was some kind of psycho who belonged to a gang or something, her group could jump me and do who knows what. Not saying that would happen, but it did cross my mind. What kind of group meets in the industrial park at midnight during the week? It was weird. Not interesting-weird—bizarre-weird.
I thought about my life. I had my friends, school, homework, my family. And this summer I would get my driver’s license and a job. I had a lot going on. I didn’t need Mallory and her secret club. Not to mention I was tired and needed to get caught up on my sleep. And I actually felt like I could sleep tonight, which was rare.
Forget it. I wasn’t going to go.
At ten o’clock I shut everything down, washed up, and climbed between the sheets. I closed my eyes and regulated my breathing the way Dr. Anton taught me. In, out. In, out. An hour later I was still concentrating on inhaling and exhaling, but now I was frustrated. I couldn’t sleep and I really wanted to sleep. Damn, I was tired. Why wouldn’t my body cooperate?
The house creaked and outside I heard street noises: a car driving past and the slamming of a car door. Someone was either coming or going. Curious, I got out of bed and went to the window. I separated the slats of the blinds and looked down to see my neighbor arriving home with bags of groceries. Nothing interesting there.
I turned to go back to bed, but realized that I was now wide awake. More than wide awake, really. Hyper-awake. I looked at the clock: eleven forty. I did some mental arithmetic and calculated that if I got dressed and moved quickly, I could still make it to the ball bearing factory by midnight.
CHAPTER TEN
It was completely quiet except for the slapping of my shoes against the pavement. When I took a shortcut through an empty field near the industrial park, I slowed my pace. The streetlights were further apart than in the residential section, and I couldn’t see very well. I stopped at one point and opened my phone to check the time. Good, I still had a few minutes. I would make it.
When I got to the other side of the field, I cut over to the street. Industry Drive. All the streets here had the same theme going. Manufacturing Street, Product
ion Avenue, Assembly Circle. Whoever came up with these names probably thought they were pretty clever.
I was more visible than I wanted to be, but I had to walk along the curb in order to spot the addresses on the buildings. Some of them didn’t have numbers at all, at least not that I could see. Finally I came to the right place: 276 Industry Drive. Metal Castings Inc. the sign said. The parking lot was half full, and lights were on inside. People working the night shift.
I went past the parking lot to the other side of the building and eased my way toward the back. Behind the building was another parking area, but this one lacked cars. Stacks of metal rods randomly dotted the lot. A few dumpsters were lined up to one side. A lone light post illuminated the lot, but it didn’t give much light. The asphalt pavement was cracked and buckled. When a slight breeze kicked up, I got a whiff of hot metal and grease. If the odor was that strong outside, I could only imagine how the workers smelled after working in the building for eight hours.
This empty lot didn’t look like the kind of place a secret society would meet. I stood and listened for a few minutes, but I didn’t hear any footsteps or voices. Where were they? That’s when it hit me—Mallory had gotten me good. I’d actually gone to the back of a factory at midnight looking for a top-secret organization. What kind of idiot would do that? I looked at my phone: 12:04.
I imagined her having a good laugh at my expense. It really wasn’t all that great of a practical joke. I felt like an idiot for having fallen for it. Stupid Mallory with her great laugh and intriguing invitation.
I checked my phone one more time. Nothing. I weighed my options—walk around a little more, maybe even do my usual route, or just go home? Home, I decided. I stuck the phone in my pocket and walked to the front of the building.
When I turned the corner, I walked right into Mallory, and I mean right into her—we collided face-to-face, and she sort of bounced off of me, but not before I stepped on her foot. “Hey,” she said, like I’d hurt her. “Where are you running off to, Becker?”
“Home,” I said indignantly. “I was here at the right time and you weren’t, so I was going home.”
She stood so close to me I had to look down to see her face. “You sure are impatient. It’s been what, all of three minutes?”
“I just don’t appreciate being jerked around, Mallory Nassif.” I stretched her name out for emphasis: Na-seeeef.
She held a finger up to her lips and then spoke quietly. “We’ve been here the whole time. In back behind the dumpsters. We kept waiting for you to come back, but you kept clinging to the side of the building like a big baby.”
“I looked,” I said. “And I didn’t hear anything. I wasn’t going to go scouting around behind some dumpsters.”
“You have to be bolder than that if you want to be part of our group,” Mallory whispered. “Come on.” She grabbed my sleeve and pulled me along. “I want you to meet the others.” She turned on a small flashlight and led me to the back. Her grip was firm and deliberate. We stepped around piles of industrial junk, metal rods and bins of small parts I hadn’t noticed from my hiding spot. She maneuvered around them like she’d done this before many times.
As we approached, two other kids stepped out from behind the dumpsters. A small girl wearing a black sweatshirt with the hood up, her face barely visible, and a tall, skinny guy with glasses. The guy had a knit cap set back on head, so that only a little of his white-blond hair stuck out. I didn’t recognize either of them. Mallory led me to them and finally released her grip on my arm. This was Mallory’s secret society? Not to be mean, but I wasn’t seeing much here.
Mallory pointed. “Russ, this is Nadia and Jameson.” The girl kept her head down but gave a little wave. “Jameson, Nadia, this is Russ.” Jameson nodded an acknowledgement, real serious-like. Mallory turned to me. “I told them all about you.”
“But you didn’t tell me anything about them,” I said. They were not an impressive group at all. Nadia kept looking down at her shoes, and Jameson, shifting from side to side, looked a little uncomfortable too. With one finger he pushed his glasses up and then stared at me, like I was the odd one.
“What do you want to know?” Mallory asked.
“Everything,” I said.
“We have to hide,” Nadia said, her face still aimed at the ground. “Someone is coming.”
I turned, but didn’t see anything and was about to say as much, but the other three were already in motion.
“Come on,” Jameson hissed to me, and I found myself ducking behind the dumpsters with the rest of them.
“What are we doing?” I asked Nadia, who was crouched beside me. She didn’t answer. I turned to Mallory, but she shook her head and put her fingers to her lips. The crazy girl had lured me here for some kind of wacked-out grade school game. I usually was pretty good about reading people, but I’d really messed up this time. Somehow she’d pulled me into this weirdness, she and her strange friends.
And then, we did hear someone coming. I heard the shuffle of footsteps as someone approached the dumpster, then the creak of the cover being lifted and the sound of a bag of trash being thrown in.
Were we going to jump out and scare them? Eavesdrop? What was going on? I looked at the other three, who were frozen in place.
When it was completely quiet, I turned to Mallory and said, “What the hell was that about?”
She shrugged. “We don’t want to get caught out at night.”
Well, duh. I tried again. “So why the ball bearing factory? What’s the significance?”
“No significance. It was chosen randomly as a place to meet,” Mallory said. “We like to switch it up.” She turned to Nadia. “Are you ready?” In response, Nadia’s hood bobbed up and down.
Then Nadia stepped toward me, her arm outstretched like she wanted to shake hands, but when I went to grab it, she withdrew abruptly and looked at Mallory in alarm. “What?” I asked. “Did I do something wrong?”
“Don’t move,” Mallory said. “Keep your arms at your side and stand still.”
Nadia stepped forward again. Without touching me, she ran her hand up and down my sides, and then front and back, like they do with those handheld security scanners at the airport. What was this all about? I gave Mallory a befuddled look, hoping she’d clue me in, but all three of them looked super serious, like this was a real thing. Just when I thought it was over, Nadia reached up and grabbed me by the shoulders. “Look at me,” she said. I found myself looking down at her hooded face. Even though her face was shadowed, the intense way she stared gave me the creepiest feeling. I felt exposed and ashamed, like she’d walked in on me dancing naked in my bedroom. Not that I dance naked in my bedroom. Okay, I have, but it was only the one time and no one had walked in on me. Still, I had some context.
Finally Nadia let go of me and said, “He checks out okay.”
“What the hell was that all about?” I asked.
Mallory, clearly the leader of this group, said, “Nadia has a talent for sizing people up. We weren’t about to confide in you until we knew you were okay. Too dangerous.”
“Really,” I said, folding my arms. I didn’t mean to sound sarcastic, but I knew I did sound that way, at least a little. I couldn’t help it. This was starting to remind me of the secret clubs third graders invent. Pretty soon they’d be showing me their clubhouse and their secret handshake. “So how exactly was she sizing me up?”
“That’s part of a bigger story.”
“Yeah? Well, I’m all ears, so feel free to fill me in anytime now.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I had to wait to find out. Jameson suddenly announced he was hungry and Mallory said they’d fill me in at the all-night diner on Highway 63. Rosie’s Diner had been there since my parents were kids (back then it was Melvin’s Diner), and I’d been there a million times, mostly after our high school football games. I knew the place was open all night, but it had never occurred to me to go there during my walks. Wouldn’t a teenager in a dine
r after midnight arouse suspicion? That was my thought anyway, but Jameson, Nadia, and Mallory didn’t seem concerned about it. They walked in the door like the regulars they apparently were. The place was empty, except for one old man sitting at the counter. I recognized him from around town. He looked like a bum, disheveled in flannel shirt and worn work pants, shuffling around like he was feeble-minded. Sometimes I saw him at the library, dozing in a chair by the magazines. When we saw him out in public, my mom always greeted him and they exchanged pleasantries, but she was like that with everyone. I’d never looked closely at the old guy, but Mallory greeted him warmly, placing a hand on his back and saying, “Hey, Gordy, what’s up?”
He swiveled in his chair to answer. “The sky, the stars, the moon.” He chortled more than was warranted, and Mallory laughed too. I got the impression it was a standard joke between them.
The owner, Rosie, who was also the waitress, motioned us over to what she said was their usual booth. I slid in first and was glad when Mallory sat next to me.
“You added a new person to your group,” Rosie said, bringing menus. “You’re not a trio anymore.”
“He’s on probation,” Mallory said, giving my arm a poke. “We’re still testing him out.”
Rosie laughed. “If he’s a good tipper, I say you keep him.”
Oh, shoot, the mention of tipping reminded me that I had no money with me at all. Mallory’s group knew their order without even looking at the menu. Without exception, they all ordered breakfast by giving her a number.
“Okay, so I’ve got two number fours, and a number six for the tall gentleman by the window,” Rosie said, jotting the order down on a pad. She looked up. “The usual drinks?” They nodded.
She turned her attention to me. I handed her the menu and said, “I’m not really hungry. I’ll just have a glass of water, thanks.”
Edgewood Series: Books 1 - 3 Page 4
