Edgewood Series: Books 1 - 3

by Karen McQuestion

“I find that hard to believe,” I said.

  They packed up Frank’s backpack and were out the door before I had a chance to swear him to secrecy about the exchange with Mr. Specter in the comic book store. But then I realized, if he hadn’t told anyone he’d had a stone that glowed on its own prior to this, chances were good it wouldn’t come up again. Frank had a tendency to prattle on about absolutely nothing. He’d tell me every single detail of an episode of Scooby-Doo, but forget to convey Carly’s instructions about medication he was supposed to be taking while he was at our house for the weekend. It was probably safe to assume the subject of the glowing stone would never come up. At least I hoped so.

  I was remembering all of this while I was chewing on my cafeteria pizza the next day in school when Justin interrupted my thoughts. “What do you think, Russ?”

  “About what?”

  Everyone at the table laughed. “I told you he was in another place,” Justin said, smacking his forehead with the palm of his hand, and I realized that they must have been watching me while I was lost in thought.

  “I have a lot on my mind lately,” I said, which was the absolute truth. They resumed talking, and I did my level best to pay attention, even adding a few comments here and there to prove I was present, but between my thoughts and the abundance of electricity in the cafeteria, it wasn’t easy. I never knew how much current flowed into the space behind the counter. Lights and coolers and microwaves and ovens. The school kitchen sucked massive amounts of electricity. If I tried, I could shut out my awareness of it in the same way I could ignore annoying background noise, but it took a little effort.

  One of the lunch ladies, Mrs. Whitehouse, came by our table and stopped to tell Justin he’d dropped a napkin on the floor. Mrs. Whitehouse operated under the assumption she had a rapport with the kids, which, believe me, she did not. It was sad to watch. When you went through the line, she’d sometimes randomly bellow out, “Who’s in the house?” and then cup a hand around her ear and wait for someone to call out, “Mrs. Whitehouse is in the house!” There were always a few girls nice enough to humor her. I never joined in and neither did any of my friends, even though she reportedly gave extra servings to students who played along. After everyone finished getting their food, she usually came out from behind the counter to visit tables. She joked about how growing kids should eat their vegetables and took informal surveys about the food as if we’d be getting more options in the future, but that never happened.

  Today, Mrs. Whitehouse showed interest in our group, asking if kids still read the Twilight books (she was outspokenly in favor of team Edward). I watched as she chatted with Mick about books made into movies, and I wished she would go away. None of the other school employees felt compelled to pal around with the kids. She thought she was a teenager, from the way she acted. Truthfully, it was hard to gauge her age. Her hair was dark with no gray, and she didn’t have any wrinkles, but there was something that made her seem dated. Maybe it was her shape. She wasn’t really fat, but she was proportioned funny with a noticeably large midsection and drumstick legs. Carly remembered her from her high school days, so she’d been working here since before I was born, which gave me something to go on. Mrs. Whitehouse had been wearing that hair net for a really long time.

  When the bell rang (also powered by electricity), Mrs. Whitehouse shuffled off and Lindsey, one of the girls from my table, made a point to come up to me and say, “Whatever you’re going through, Russ, I understand. If you need someone to listen, I’m here for you.” She was a cute girl and seemed nice enough. Mick, always putting his own womanizing spin on things, referred to her as “doable.” Lindsey patted my arm in a reassuring way and leaned forward so that I could see down the front of her scoop-necked shirt. Normally that would have totally made me lose my mind with lust, and that would have led to complete social-awkwardness, but I could see Mallory across the cafeteria and Lindsey held (almost) no appeal for me. “Thanks,” I said. “Good to know.”

  Two hours later I slid into my spot in science class, so jazzed up I felt like I might jump out of my skin. Sometime during this hour, I needed to tell Mallory about the stone—how I had it and lost it without even realizing I had it in the first place. And when the hour was over, I would have to confront Mr. Specter about the stone and tell him I needed it back. I wasn’t good at standing up to adults. I’d seen other kids argue with teachers, usually about grades, and also usually without success. I’d never felt that strongly about a grade, probably because I did pretty well. Before today, I couldn’t imagine challenging a teacher about anything. Now I had no choice.

  Mallory walked in with another girl just as the bell rang, leaving me unable to talk to her before class. I heard her laugh and it annoyed me a little bit. How could she laugh while I was in crisis mode?

  “We need to talk,” I whispered as she took her seat in front of me.

  She looked startled, but nodded. “After school.”

  For fifty minutes, I was so preoccupied with what was to come, I barely heard a word Mr. Specter said. I was glad he didn’t call on me during the class discussion. Maybe he sensed I had a storm cloud hovering overhead, ready to burst. Mallory, too, was quieter than usual.

  I kept thinking about the powers Mallory, Jameson, and Nadia had, and my own discovery too that I could heal Mallory’s cut. If I could do that and take a bullet out of the back of my neck too, what else could I do? I imagined walking through a hospital and putting my hands on patients in an effort to heal them. Would it work? And if it did, and the word got out, what then? Would people line up in front of my house begging for my help? I imagined a crowd pulling at me, every one of them with a heartbreaking story, all of them wanting my full attention and my ability to heal. How could I not do it? But if I could do it, the news would spread and more and more and more people would come. And soon there would be thousands and the numbers would grow. It was a scary thought.

  After playing out this scenario in my head, I knew I didn’t want it. Not because I didn’t want to help, but because I had the sense my ability wasn’t supposed to be used randomly. None of our powers were intended to be used randomly. There was, I sensed, a purpose. I just didn’t know what that purpose could be.

  When the bell rang and everyone else gathered up their things, I went up to the front of the room. Mr. Specter had opened his briefcase on his desk and he was riffling through the contents. I stood and waited.

  “Yes, Mr. Becker?” He hadn’t looked up at all, yet somehow he knew I was there.

  “The stone you bought from my nephew at the comic book store yesterday?”

  “Yes?” Now he looked up and glanced at me over his glasses.

  “It has some significance for me. I’d like to buy it back from you.”

  “Okay.” He shuffled a stack of paper and attached a top sheet with a paperclip.

  “That’s okay?”

  “Fine with me,” he said.

  That wasn’t what I was expecting to hear. “You don’t mind?”

  “Of course not. Why would I mind?” He sounded almost bored. “It’s a stone. If it has some significance for you, certainly you should have it.”

  I exhaled in relief. Out in the hallway, kids let out pent-up energy—lockers slammed, voices yelled back and forth, music blasted. “I have the twenty dollars with me,” I said, pulling the bill out of my pocket and looking at him expectantly.

  “Surely you don’t think I brought a stone with me to school?”

  I stared blankly. Stupidly, for some reason, I had thought he’d have it with him. “Oh, I guess not. Well, if you bring it tomorrow…”

  “I’d rather not conduct business at school, if you don’t mind,” Mr. Specter said. “It might have the look of impropriety. If you’d like to stop by my house this evening around seven, we could do the exchange then. You know where I live?”

  “Yeah.” Everyone knew where he lived. He owned a red brick house; his backyard abutted the high school football field. You could see his
entire roof from the bleachers. Some kids once got into trouble for throwing tennis balls over the fence during a football game. Several of the balls made it into his rain gutters, which caused overflow problems during the next storm. Or so I heard.

  He snapped his briefcase shut. “Is there anything else, Mr. Becker?” he asked, pleasantly enough.

  “No, that would be it.”

  “To make it sound like an acceptable outing, perhaps you can tell your parents you need an hour at my house to watch a special science demonstration for extra credit. Sound good?”

  When I nodded mutely, Mr. Specter said, “Well then, I’ll see you tonight around seven.”

  He walked briskly out of the room while I stood there wondering how he knew I’d been wondering what excuse to give my parents. Maybe just a lucky guess.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “Don’t argue with me, Russ. I’m coming and that’s all there is to it,” Mallory said, as she drove me home from school. I’d gratefully accepted her offer of a ride home after science class ended that day. It beat taking the bus or walking, that’s for sure. I’d hoped people would notice us together in the parking lot but no such luck. None of my friends were around, and everyone else was busy with their own thing. High-schoolers can be so self-involved.

  I’d just explained about the stone, and that I was going to Mr. Specter’s that evening, when Mallory announced she was going with me. I told her it wasn’t necessary, but secretly I welcomed it. For one, I’d be going somewhere with Mallory (and not Jameson this time), and for another, she could drive, which eliminated parental involvement. And lastly, the whole thing kind of weirded me out. It would be nice to have someone else along. Safety in numbers.

  I used Mr. Specter’s lie and told my folks I was going to his house to see a science demonstration. “It’ll take about an hour,” I said, and they nodded agreeably despite the fact that the whole concept was absurd. What teacher requires kids to go to his house ever, much less on a school night for extra credit? Why a Monday? What kind of demonstration? But true to form, neither of them asked. I was already getting an A in science. Presumably with a little extra credit I could bump it up to a more acceptable A+.

  Maybe part of their easy acceptance came with the knowledge they didn’t have to drive me. When I told them Mallory Nassif was picking me up, they didn’t question that either. Again, I’m just too good of a kid to ever do anything wrong in their eyes. Lying to them now made me feel terrible, but it couldn’t be avoided.

  So now Mallory and I were headed to Specter’s house, with Jameson nowhere in sight. I didn’t miss that guy at all. Maybe I’d suggest we stop at Starbucks afterward and I could worm my way into her heart over a chai latte or whatever it is she liked to drink. Stopping somewhere for ice cream was another thought. The truth of it was, I didn’t care what we did, I just liked being with her. Something about her made me want to be as near to her as possible.

  Maybe Carly was right and I did have the love disease. Lately I thought about Mallory all the time. I found myself replaying our conversations in my head over and over again when I was alone in my room. I’d memorized every expression on her face, the way she frowned slightly when she was deep in thought, the way she burst out laughing when something funny caught her off guard, the look of concern she had when people were injured, like when we’d found Gordy. Making her laugh was the best, like winning a prize. I found myself making funny little comments on a regular basis, trying to amuse her. I was a rat pulling levers, hoping a food pellet would come my way. It was craziness, but I couldn’t seem to stop.

  Guys my age get stereotyped as being all about sex all the time. “Hormones are raging,” is what my health teacher, Ms. Hadley, was fond of saying. Some of that is true, but the hormone thing isn’t just a teenager thing. I don’t think I’m any moodier than, say, my mom, who admits to having emotional swings and wicked hot flashes (she calls them power surges, as if that makes it better). And I probably don’t think about sex any more than the average guy in his thirties. The thing they never talk about is that besides thinking about sex, guys my age also think about other things: the way it would feel to wrap my arms around her, how I like to picture myself protecting her from harm, what it would be like to press my forehead against hers and look right into her big dark eyes. I see movies with couples making out and I mentally insert myself with Mallory. I wonder sometimes—what would she do if I suddenly kissed her? These are the kinds of things I’d never tell my friends, or anyone else for that matter, but it’s all true.

  I wasn’t one hundred percent sure if I was in love with Mallory Nassif, but I knew I wanted her to love me. I craved having her by my side, hearing the sound of her voice, having her full attention. I wanted to feel her body pressed against me and her lips against my ear. If she loved me, I wouldn’t need anything else.

  As a passenger in her car, it was easy to watch her without seeming too obvious. I liked watching her fiddle with the radio, and I got a rush when she looked to me for approval when she got to a certain song. I always agreed with her choice. Whatever Mallory wanted worked for me.

  “Nadia said she saw you yesterday,” Mallory said, breaking the silence between us. She paused at a stop sign before turning left.

  “Yeah, at the custard shop. After the whole thing happened at the comic book store. She was with her mother. We didn’t talk.” We were only a block away from our destination and would be at Mr. Specter’s in about two minutes. If I was going to ask, I’d have to make it quick. “How did her face get scarred like that?”

  “You saw it?” Mallory asked incredulously.

  “Just for a second. She pulled her hood back.”

  “On purpose?”

  “I guess so. It seemed like she wanted to show me.”

  Mallory shook her head. “Unbelievable. When Jameson asked about her face, she wouldn’t talk to him for a week. Why would she show you, someone she barely knows?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Hmmm. So odd.” Mallory exhaled loudly. “Nadia is sort of a puzzle to me. She doesn’t open up much. I knew her about a year before she even talked about it.”

  I tried again. “What happened? Was she burned?”

  “In a way.” She tapped at the steering wheel with her fingers, as if debating whether to elaborate.

  “If you don’t want to tell me…”

  “No, I can tell you,” Mallory said finally. “This is what happened. She was riding the bus, going to visit a friend, when some crazy man came on board carrying an open container full of this liquid. He started raving about our imperialistic society, and he wouldn’t sit down, and he wouldn’t pay the fare. When the bus driver told him to get out, he flung the liquid up in the air. It turned out to be battery acid. Nadia got hit in the face. The driver got splashed pretty badly too. A couple of other passengers tackled the guy and they called the police. It was awful.”

  “Battery acid?” How horrific. It was like something from a movie. “I don’t remember hearing about this,” I said. “Was it in the news?” We were pulling up in front of Mr. Specter’s now. On the opposite side of the street the curb was lined with cars. Someone had company over.

  “It happened in Illinois. They moved here two years ago.”

  “And that’s why her mother never lets her out of her sight.”

  “It’s worse than that,” Mallory said. “Nadia could get plastic surgery and it would make her face look a million times better, but her mother won’t let her do it.”

  “Too expensive?”

  “No, it’s not the money. In fact, insurance would cover it. Her mother won’t let her fix her face as punishment. It’s because Nadia didn’t have her parents’ permission to be on the bus that day.”

  I let the words sink in. “But that’s cruel,” I said, shocked. “She has to be deformed forever because she did something wrong once?” I couldn’t imagine my own parents ever acting that unreasonably, no matter what I did. I complained about them some
times, but I knew that overall they wanted me to be happy and do well. We were all on the same team for the most part.

  “The woman is certifiably insane and just a horrible person,” Mallory said. “Nadia can’t wait until she turns eighteen because then she can arrange to have the surgery herself. But in the meantime…”

  “She’s stuck,” I said, finishing for her. And then, almost to myself, “Wow, that’s a lot of years of suffering.” And the most important years too. Being disfigured anytime was horrible, but having it happen when you’re a teenager was worse yet.

  Mallory turned the key and the engine went silent. “Let’s get this over with,” she said. “I’m eager to see this glowing stone.”

  We walked up the pathway leading to the front porch with me in the lead, since the pavement was too narrow for two people side by side. Besides, as Mallory had said, this meeting was sort of my thing. “You do the talking,” she said, giving my back a nudge. Her fingertips trailed down my spine, giving me the shivers. “I’m just tagging along.”

  The front door opened before I could even knock. As we stepped onto the concrete stoop, Mr. Specter pushed open the screen door to greet us. “Good evening, Mr. Becker,” he said. “Oh good, you brought Miss Nassif along with you. Perfect.” He nodded at Mallory. “Please, come in.”

  I’d never been inside Mr. Specter’s house and I didn’t know anyone who had, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. Judging from the front entryway and living room, he believed in keeping things orderly. I’d heard he lived alone, so this was all his doing: the gray mat just inside the door where we wiped our feet, the coat rack and umbrella stand in the corner. In the living room beyond, I saw a couch and two chairs arranged around a coffee table, two end tables, and a lamp. There was no TV or anything else. Furniture displays at stores looked homier. “I don’t spend much time up here,” he said, as if reading my mind. “My den is where you’ll find evidence of life. I spend most of my time there.” He beckoned with one long finger. “Follow me.”