Sully coughed, nearly choking on the pretzel. At least she hadn’t said it with Hunter in the room. He wouldn’t put that past her. “Jeez, Mom.” He raised his hands. “If I was going to, if she were the least bit interested, I sure wouldn’t do it in my bedroom with my mother on the other side of the wall, listening.”
“I wouldn’t be listening. I’d be plugging my ears and humming.”
Sully laughed, despite how uncomfortable he was feeling. “That’s good to know.” He turned toward the counter and took another pretzel; his face felt so hot he was sure it was glowing bright red.
Mom pulled open a drawer, started taking out silverware. “So you’re not having sex with her?”
Sully cringed at how loud she said it. “You know, these walls are paper thin. I used to listen to Jay Leno through them while I was falling asleep. No, Mom, she’s just a friend.”
“Awfully pretty friend.”
The toilet flushed.
A moment later Hunter joined them, still wearing her gloves with the fingertips cut off.
“So, Hunter, Sully tells me you were homeless.” Mom pressed a hand to her chest. “That just breaks my heart. He said your mother died?”
“Mom.” Sully was trying to stay calm. “Let her drink a glass of eggnog before you interrogate her.”
Mom pulled a Christmas cup down from the cabinet, poured a glass of eggnog, and set it in front of Hunter. “Now, tell me your life story.”
Hunter lifted the cup, laughing.
“Sully,” someone called from outside. Then again, “Sul-ly,” this time a chorus of voices, singing his name, badly.
Sully went to the big picture window that overlooked the common area. The whole gang was looking up at him: Mike, Laurie, Donny, Jim, Bugs, four or five others.
His phone signaled an incoming text message. Sully pulled the phone from his back pocket. It was from Donny.
Come on out! We’re caroling.
He showed the message to Hunter. “Want to go caroling?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know the words to any songs.”
“That’s okay; they don’t either.”
When they were in the hallway, out of earshot of his mom, Sully said, “The caroling is just an excuse for them to get away from their folks and drink.”
“Got it. They don’t look like carolers.”
Sully introduced Hunter to the gang, then they headed off along the frozen ground. Mike broke out in a loud rendition of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” almost completely devoid of melody. Some of the others joined in, but after the “God and sinners reconcile” line, everyone muttered incoherent syllables that degenerated into laughter. No one knew what came next.
“Here you go.” Mike handed Sully an open carton of eggnog. Sully took a swig, and winced. It was about eighty percent vodka.
Mike patted his back. “That’ll put some hair on your chest.”
Sully offered it to Hunter. She took a drink and blinked as she returned the carton to Mike. “You’re supposed to leave some of the eggnog.”
“Welcome to the Yonkers alcoholics club,” Mike said.
Laurie sidled up, gave Sully a quick one-armed hug as they walked. Her pale cheeks were red, her eyes warm from shots of eggnog-flavored vodka. It was strange to look at Laurie and feel only the faintest stirring of what had once felt like a volcano of love, a Fourth of July finale of passion. They’d gone out for only a few weeks; then she’d given him an awkward speech about “liking him as a friend, but not…you know.”
Bugs caught his eye behind Hunter’s back, gave him an enthusiastic thumbs-up. Sully just smiled. There was no behind-the-back hand signal for I know, she’s really something, but we’re just friends.
Donny and Jim, who were brothers, were pelting windows with snowballs. Neither was wearing gloves.
“So, Hunter, what did you ask Santa to bring you for Christmas?” Mike asked, sidling up to her.
She thought for a moment. “I asked him for strength.”
“Strength? I think you got the wrong guy; you’re supposed to ask Jesus for strength. Santa brings the swag.”
“Yeah, well, the strength I want can be wrapped in a package with a bow on top. I asked Santa for a chocolate-colored marble.” She shrugged. “But he never brings me what I want.”
“You must be a naughty girl, then.”
Sully felt his blood pressure rise. Mike was hitting on her. That asshat.
“Now you’re confusing him with Jesus. Jesus is the one who cares about good and bad. Santa gives out presents based on how much your parents make; he has a way of leaving poor kids cheap crap, or skipping their houses altogether.”
Mike laughed. “Ain’t that the truth.”
When the carton of vodka was empty, the troop broke up after a round of hugs, back slaps, and Merry Christmases.
On the way back to Sully’s apartment they passed the complex’s pathetic little playground—a couple of swings and a slide missing its ladder. Hunter made a beeline for one of the swings, swept the snow off it, and sat. Sully took the other.
Across the snow-covered lawn and Germond Road, McDonald’s sat in darkness.
“Your friends are okay,” Hunter said. “You can always tell by how they treat the new kid.”
Sully chuckled. “They’re not as welcoming when the new kid isn’t scorching hot.”
“Shut up, Yonkers.” She said it like she was put out, but she was grinning.
It was one of those magical moments, sitting there in the dark with the snow falling on Christmas Eve. Sully felt an undeniable urge to lean over and kiss Hunter. But looking at her profile as she gazed off into the parking lot, he guessed being kissed was the last thing on Hunter’s mind, that a kiss would dump a bucket of ice water on the moment.
I’m all business, no pleasure, she’d said.
“You and Laurie had a thing?” Hunter asked.
Her words startled him. “What? How did you know?”
She grinned. “One of my superpowers.”
Christmas music drifted from a nearby apartment. “White Christmas.” It was muffled, the tune just recognizable.
“So show me where you found it,” Hunter said.
It. No need to get more specific than that. Over the years Sully had shown so many people where he found it, including dozens of journalists.
He led her to the stream that ran between the apartments and the highway, to the overpass he and Donny had waded under during their bare-handed carp-catching contest.
“There it is. I’d show you the gap in the wall I stuck my hand through after a carp swam into it, but it’s probably not a good night for wading.”
Hunter leaned out over the stream, trying to see into the dark tunnel. “Was that the first place you looked, after Holliday burned the Cherry Reds and the second wave appeared?”
Sully laughed. “You got me.”
She nodded. “It made sense that the new ones might be hidden in all the same places as the last batch.”
“There wouldn’t have been much challenge in that, though.”
Ice had formed along the edges of the stream, but the black water in the center sluiced along, making a pleasant trickling sound.
Hunter’s phone chimed, alerting her to an incoming text. She pulled out her phone, smiled. “It’s from my Korean mom, wishing me a merry Christmas.” She typed a reply and sent it. “We’d better get back. Your mom’s all alone on Christmas Eve.” There was a twinkle in Hunter’s eye as she said it.
As they headed toward the apartments, Hunter said, “So it’s just you and your mom? No relatives nearby who’ll be knocking on the door tomorrow, bringing figgy pudding for Christmas dinner?”
“Nope. Just us. If we want figgy pudding we have to make it ourselves. Most of our relatives live around Pittsburgh. We went to Pittsburgh for Christmas a couple of times, but decided we’d rather celebrate by ourselves.”
“Bad relatives?”
Sully considered, trying to wrap his head arou
nd how to describe them. “They’re not bad people, they’re just…strange. If you met them, they’d be friendly, all grins and handshakes and small talk. But that’s as far as you’d ever get with them. You’d never get to know them. They’re obsessed with mysteries and produce. That’s all they want to talk about.”
“You mean, like TV show mysteries?”
Sully nodded. “Sherlock Holmes. Those British shows on PBS where you can barely understand what anyone’s saying. If they’re not talking about Miss Marple, they’re going on about where you can buy the freshest asparagus, how seedless watermelon isn’t as good as regular.” Sully opened his mouth to ask about Hunter’s relatives, then realized that might be a touchy subject. If she had any, they couldn’t be worth much if they hadn’t taken her in.
“You said most of your mom’s family are in Puerto Rico?”
“That’s right. I never met my father, so I don’t really know his family, besides one aunt who isn’t worth knowing.”
“Definitely no figgy pudding for you, then.”
Hunter giggled. “No figgy pudding. No nothing. My family is one big fat lump of coal. Unless you count my Korean mom.”
—
In the morning, Hunter came out wearing a green sweater, along with her gloves and combat boots. They got some coffee, then sat cross-legged on the floor and opened gifts. It was the first time in his life Sully wasn’t the least bit interested in his own gifts. He couldn’t wait to watch Hunter open her gloves.
Hunter gave his mom a big white knitted hat.
“It’s called a slouchy,” Hunter said as his mom put it on. It sank onto her head like an accordion. “It’s all the rage in my neighborhood.”
Mom took it off, examined it carefully. “It’s gorgeous. It’s handmade, isn’t it?”
Hunter nodded. “I made it.”
“Wow,” Sully said. “Can I see it?” Mom passed it over and Sully admired it, shaking his head. “That’s beautiful. I didn’t know you could crochet.”
“Yarn’s a whole lot cheaper than hats and sweaters.”
Sully’s mom got him a big hardcover book on spheres that he didn’t have. There was a separate page on each color.
Sully had hoped Hunter would like what he got her, but her reaction took him by surprise. She cried. She pressed the gloves to her mouth as tears rolled down her cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “I just love these so much. They’re perfect.” She scooted over to Sully, hugged him, kissed his cheek. “Thank you for this, for all this. It’s the best Christmas I’ve ever had.”
She scooted toward the tree, grabbed a present in cartoon snowman wrapping paper, and handed it to Sully. It was surprisingly heavy.
Smiling, Sully held the package next to his ear and shook it before setting it down. He tore open the wrapping, opened the flaps on a plain cardboard box.
Inside were two Teal spheres. Fall asleep more easily, rarity level one. Hunter must have paid at least a hundred dollars for the pair, unless she managed to find them in the wild.
“The day we found the Hot Pink, you said you were having trouble sleeping. I know you can’t go burning your stock because you’ve got to make a living, but I figured if you got a pair of Teals as a gift”—Hunter shrugged—“well then, you’d have to burn them, ’cause they were a gift.”
Sully couldn’t believe how much thought, and money she couldn’t afford, Hunter had put into this gift. “Wow.” He lifted the spheres out, held one in each hand. He wanted to tell her it was too much, but he didn’t want to spoil the pleasure she was so obviously getting from his reaction.
“Wow,” he repeated. “This—I wasn’t expecting this. Thank you.”
“Go ahead,” Mom said, leaning forward on the couch.
Sully looked from one Teal to the other, then up at Hunter. “Should I?”
Hunter nodded. “Go for it.”
“My first ever. I’m going to remember this for the rest of my life.” He lifted them slowly, touched them to his temples. They felt cool, smooth. As he’d heard from so many others who’d burned spheres, there was no sensation; he didn’t feel any different.
The spheres’ brilliant blue-green hue began to fade. He set them down on the carpet carefully, reverently.
“Your first, but not your last,” Hunter said. She leaped up. “Now go take a nap.”
“I can’t take a nap.” Sully laughed. “I’ve never been so wide-awake. I just burned my first marbles.”
“That’s the whole point of them, though. Even when you’re pumped up, or your thoughts are racing, you can fall asleep.” She held out a hand. Sully took it, and Hunter pulled him to his feet and nudged him toward his room. “Go ahead. We’ll come in ten minutes and wake you.”
So Sully went to take a nap, although he wasn’t the least bit tired. It took him about two minutes to doze off.
—
Feeling warm, Christmassy, and utterly content, Sully curled up on the recliner and flipped open his new book to the first page. The first color it covered was Cherry Red, which made sense, given that Cherry Red was responsible for reproduction, for seeding Earth with a second wave of spheres.
His name was mentioned as the discoverer of one of the two Cherry Reds. It was kind of cool to see his name in print.
The thing about it was, Sully was afraid the Cherry Red would define his entire life. When he was thirty, he didn’t want someone pointing him out while he stacked soup cans at Price Chopper and saying, “See that guy? When he was thirteen, he found the Cherry Red.”
He and his mom had had a rough year after the Cherry Red. It was amazing what it did to your head to believe you’d been handed $2.5 million, only to have it snatched back.
Sully thumbed through the pages, stopping at random: Mint (more outgoing), Magenta (night vision), Plum (erase memories).
“I don’t know why someone would want to burn Plums,” Sully said to Hunter, who was sitting cross-legged on his bed, watching A Christmas Story on Sully’s little TV. “Who wants to erase a part of their life, whether it’s good or bad? You couldn’t pay me to erase even my worst memory.”
Very slowly, Hunter closed her eyes. “That’s because you’ve never had something bad happen to you.”
Sully laughed. “Are you kidding me? My father’s an alcoholic. He once kicked me in the ass so hard he lifted me right off the ground. My life was miserable before Mom left him.”
As Hunter turned to face him, Sully could see he’d hit a nerve. “So tell me. Do you wake up screaming from nightmares of your drunken father kicking you in the ass really hard? Do you think about it every day? When you think about it, do you still break out in a sweat and get sick to your stomach after all these years?”
Sully regretted opening his mouth. He didn’t appreciate Hunter making him feel like he’d just drowned a puppy or something. “You know, you don’t have a monopoly on hard times. My mom just lost her job. If not for the Hot Pink, we’d have no way to pay the rent next month.”
“You think that’s something we have in common, don’t you? That we both grew up poor. You’re not poor. You’re just growing up in the crappiest part of a tony suburb. You get three meals a day; you stop in at McDonald’s for french fries on the way to your soccer league.” The way she said it, she made soccer league sound like a particularly pussy disease. “You have your own room, for God’s sake. You’re not poor. You just feel poor because everyone around you is rich.”
Sully held up both hands. “Hey, you don’t have to jump down my throat. I was just saying that, to me, Plums aren’t worth the price.”
Hunter’s scowl softened. “I’m sorry. It’s just…I have friends who would trade a kidney for a set of Plums. They’ve been through things you wouldn’t believe, that they’d do anything to forget.”
Sully could see this was something Hunter wanted him to understand. Needed him to understand.
“Sorry. Sometimes I just think out loud without thinking through what I’m saying first.”
CHAPTER 8
There was tightness in Sully’s chest as he drove. He didn’t want Hunter to go home. Seeing her away from the flea market, away from hunting, he realized he’d had her all wrong. She wasn’t hard and closed down and serious by nature; she was that way because she had to be. Given the chance to kick back, she was funny and honest. Easy to be with. The apartment was going to feel empty with her gone.
When they had gone Christmas shopping, Dom had said Sully was madly in love with Hunter. Sully didn’t know her well enough to go that far, but he liked her. He liked her a lot.
“Thank you for inviting me,” she said.
“You made my mom’s Christmas. She wasn’t just being polite when she said you’re welcome back any time.”
Hunter nodded, pleased.
“You made my Christmas, too.”
She pulled her backpack into her lap, took hold of the zipper. After a long pause, she seemed to decide something, and unzipped the pocket. She pulled out her hunting notebook.
“I think I know where we might be able to find something rare. I mean really rare. Like maybe an eight.”
Sully leaned forward in his seat. “Where?”
“In the city.”
“I thought you said the city was picked clean?”
“I think there’s a place everyone’s overlooked.”
Sully’s heart was thumping. Hunter had led them to a Hot Pink. If she said there was a place where they could find an eight, he believed her. “Come on, don’t keep me in suspense.”
Hunter typed on her phone, then held it where Sully could see the screen while driving.
It was a photo of a water tower on a tenement roof. The tower was round, with a roof that looked like the Tin Man’s hat, and stood on crosshatched metal stilts. He’d seen towers like it all of his life; they were all over the city.
“Holy—” Sully swallowed. Inside the water towers? Never in a million years would he have thought of that. “But they’re filled with water, aren’t they?”
Burning Midnight Page 8
