Burning Midnight

by Will McIntosh

  CHAPTER 18

  Sully heard footsteps on the stairs at exactly ten a.m. He opened the door before Hunter could knock.

  “Everything okay?” he asked.

  “Relax, Yonkers. I got it right here.” She unslung her backpack and followed him into the apartment.

  “Where’s your mom?” she asked, looking around.

  “CVS. She got a part-time job.” Doing her part to keep them in Yonkers until the school year ended. But she wouldn’t have to work for long. Sully was going to see to that.

  Hunter dropped her pack on the coffee table, produced a key, unlocked and unzipped a side pouch, and took out the Gold.

  “Where did you keep it while you slept?” Sully asked. Just the sight of it set his heart thumping.

  Hunter laughed. “Sleep? I didn’t sleep. But while I was trying I had the pack tied to my wrist, plus I was curled around it like it was my baby.”

  Sully would have been happier if it was in a safe-deposit box, but what Hunter had described wasn’t as bad as what he’d imagined.

  “Hey, you remember Dom, right?” Before they got talking, he wanted to call Dom and get him to come over.

  Hunter nodded.

  “I think we could use his help. And we’ve got a friend, Mandy, who—”

  Hunter leaped from the couch. “You told them?” She made it sound like something obscene.

  “Not yet, but of course I’m going to tell them. They’re my friends. Plus, we could use some help.”

  “We agreed we wouldn’t tell anyone until we figured this out.”

  “No we didn’t!” Sully would have remembered agreeing to that.

  Hunter sat. “Well, it goes without saying. That’s one of the things we need to plan this morning: who we tell, if anyone.” She squeezed her temples. “As soon as we tell people, they’re going to tell other people, and pretty soon someone’s going to be pointing a gun at us. Only, this time it won’t be street thugs, it’ll be paramilitary with automatic rifles.”

  Sully tried to stay calm. “My friends won’t tell anyone. We can trust them. Plus, I want to hear what they—”

  “No. We don’t need any help.”

  Sully stood, went to the window. He didn’t like the way Hunter seemed to think she had the final word on this. Yes, she owned sixty percent of the Gold. That didn’t mean her vote on everything counted for sixty percent.

  “After all this, you still don’t trust me.”

  “I don’t trust your friends. There’s a difference.”

  “No there isn’t. I trust them. If you don’t trust them, you don’t trust me.” He turned to face her. “When we lost the Hot Pink, you immediately assumed I had cheated you. You didn’t take one second to consider maybe I’d been cheated, too, maybe I was just as devastated as you. Even after you find out you were wrong, even after I trust you with the Gold, it all means nothing.”

  Hunter seemed surprised by the ferocity of Sully’s anger. Good. Maybe it was time she saw he could bite back when he wanted to. “I apologized to you about the Hot Pink,” she said. “More than once.”

  “You said the words, but nothing’s changed. You’re still acting like I’m trying to cheat you.”

  Hunter jumped up again. “I’m treating you like you’re a rube, like you’re someone who handed over the Cherry Red for a piece of paper, who figured some guy at a flea market carrying fourteen grand in cash must be someone you can trust. I’m not going to let you blow this for me.”

  “So now I’m a rube.” At another time that would have hurt, but now it just made him angrier. “First I’m smart enough to cheat you out of the Hot Pink, now I’m too stupid to be trusted? Or, hold on, you also said the problem was my friends can’t be trusted. Which is it? Who can’t be trusted? Oh, wait, that’s right: no one can be trusted.”

  Hunter dropped heavily onto the couch, her eyes narrowed, jaw clenched.

  “You know, I’m not the one with all the secrets here,” Sully said. “I’ve been nothing but up-front with you from the start. You met my mom, for God’s sake. I’m not the one who shuts down any time someone asks anything personal.”

  Hunter reacted like Sully had slapped her. She put a hand over her mouth, shook her head slowly. He’d hit a nerve. Maybe that was a good thing; maybe it was time to get things out in the open.

  “You want to know my secrets?” She said it softly, almost whispering, her voice trembling. “Here. Here are my secrets.” Not taking her eyes off him, she propped one foot on the coffee table, leaned forward, and tore at the laces of her boot until they came undone. She grabbed the toe and heel of the boot and tugged it off, then flung it at Sully, hitting him in the knee. She yanked off her sock.

  Half her foot was gone. She had no big or second toe; the ones that remained formed a crooked triangle.

  Sully looked at her, his eyes questioning.

  “It was a freezing-cold night.” She swallowed. “We had nowhere to go. My mother took me under the High Bridge to sleep.” A tear formed in the corner of her eye and rolled down her cheek. “She covered us with cardboard, then gave me her coat.” Hunter raised a quivering hand to her mouth. “When I woke up she was dead. She froze to death. I had to pry her hand from mine. I was seven.”

  Sully’s anger evaporated. He didn’t know what to say. I’m sorry seemed so small and empty in the face of what she’d just told him. That was why she’d refused to put on Sully’s socks when she stepped in the stream at Bear Mountain.

  “Are you happy now? Now you know my secrets.” She wiped the tear from her face with a savage swipe, as if it had no business being there.

  Not knowing what to say, Sully went and sat beside her. He wrapped an arm around her. She started to move away, then relaxed. Her whole body was trembling, as if she was freezing cold.

  He thought back to their conversation about the Plums. Now he understood why she’d gotten so angry. She’d been talking about herself. She would give a kidney for a set of Plums so she could forget the day her mother died. And there he was, talking about how worthless they were.

  Hunter was right, he didn’t know real suffering. Not the kind she’d gone through.

  Still trembling, Hunter curled up on the couch and closed her eyes. Sully stood to give her more room, but she grabbed the sleeve of his sweatshirt and pulled him back down.

  The room was warm, but Hunter was shivering, her jaw trembling. Sully wrapped his hands over hers to warm her fingers. That was why she always wore gloves, why she’d gotten angry when he asked about it.

  “Better,” she said, the words barely audible.

  Sully tried to imagine waking up next to his mother’s body, dealing with the guilt of knowing she had died protecting him. Hunter had been standing under that bridge, her mother’s body at her frozen feet, no one to tell, no place to go. Seven years old. Had she left her mother? Had she cried out for help until someone came? He wasn’t about to ask. No wonder she didn’t want to talk about her childhood.

  He studied her face, her cheeks even sharper than usual because of the tension in her jaw. Soon she’d be a millionaire. Sully took solace in that thought. These were such strange days; he felt both sad and elated, sitting there holding Hunter’s hands.

  “Go ahead and call your friends,” Hunter said. “Tell them to come on over.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She nodded. “If you trust them, I guess I can trust them too.”

  Sully took out his phone. “Thank you.”

  He texted Dom.

  Pick up Mandy. Come over IMMEDIATELY. Big news. Huge.

  Hunter opened her eyes. “I’m sorry I brought you down with that. We’re going to be millionaires, and I’m telling sad stories and throwing boots. We should be dancing.”

  “No, I’m glad you told me. Now I understand. I couldn’t fit all the pieces of you together. You didn’t make sense to me. Now you do. And I like you even more, although I didn’t think that was possible.”

  Hunter gave him a heavy-lidded look.
“Don’t feed me that line.”

  “It’s not a line.” Sully paused, wondering if it would be a mistake to tell her how he really felt. Maybe he owed it to her, after what she’d just shared with him. Time to get everything out in the open. “Half the reason I was out there freezing my butt off every night was so I could be with you.”

  Hunter didn’t say anything. She gave him an unreadable look that might have been surprise, or worry, or confusion. He shrugged, wanting to break the tension. “Not to mention I got to see you in that skintight suit.”

  Hunter threw back her head and laughed. She reached up and punched his shoulder. “Shut up.”

  Sully fanned himself with his hand. “Just thinking about it.”

  She shook her head, her eyebrows pinched. It was her What am I going to do with you? face.

  Barely realizing what he was doing, Sully leaned down to kiss her.

  Hunter pulled back, gave him another unreadable look, then leaned in and kissed him.

  She didn’t turn her head like in the water tower bar. She let her lips linger on his before finally pulling back, clearing her throat, smiling ever so slightly.

  “Okay, then. We’ve got a fifty-million-dollar marble to think about. Let’s try to stay focused.”

  “Oh. Right. The fifty-million-dollar marble. It totally slipped my mind.”

  Hunter lifted her hand as if she was going to slap him. “Going to school on the Cherry Red sale, I think the first thing we do is hire legal representation.”

  Sully pointed at her. “Definitely.”

  Hunter reached for her sock, pulled it on. “My foot’s pretty disgusting.”

  Sully shrugged. “It’s a foot. You walk on it. I don’t think anyone’s feet are all that attractive.”

  Hunter laughed. “I guess that’s one way to look at it.”

  They strategized about how to sell the Gold until there was a rap on the door. “It’s Dom. And Stretch.”

  “Don’t call me that,” they heard Mandy say.

  Hunter looked at Sully. “So that’s your dream team out there, come to save the day?”

  Sully went to let them in.

  When he turned back toward the room, the Gold was gone. Back into Hunter’s pack, he assumed.

  “So what’s the huge news?” Dom looked from Sully to Hunter and back. “You said to get here immediately.”

  Sully put his hands on Dom’s shoulders, leaned in close. “You can’t tell anyone. Not anyone. If word got out, we could be killed. Seriously.”

  Dom nodded. “I swear to God.”

  Sully turned to Mandy. “You, too. No one. Not your parents, not anyone.”

  She looked confused. “You’re serious? Why would someone want to kill you? Did you do something illegal?”

  Sully huffed, trying to catch his breath, excited all over again. “We found a sphere in one of the towers.”

  Dom grabbed his shoulder. “Holy crap. Is it an eight? Tell me you found an eight.”

  Sully’s belly did a flip. “Better.”

  Dom started to say something, but it caught in his throat. It was sinking in: if it was better than an eight, Sully was talking millions.

  “It’s a new one. It’s gold, and it’s bigger, like the Midnight Blue.”

  “Oh, my God,” Mandy whispered. She put a hand on her head. “Oh, my God.”

  “I know.”

  Dom was squatting, hands on his knees, like he’d just been punched. “Where is it?”

  “It’s safe,” Hunter said.

  Sully caught Hunter’s eye, nodded. “We can trust them.”

  Hunter gave him a look. “How long have you known this girl? A couple of months?”

  For a second there, Sully’d thought some of Hunter’s hard edges had been smoothed by the moment they shared. Evidently not; she was back to being all business.

  Dom straightened, folded his arms. “That’s about as long as Sully’s known you, isn’t it?”

  Hunter pinched her lower lip. “No one can know about this until we’ve got things figured out.”

  Dom and Mandy both nodded.

  “Cross my heart and hope to die,” Dom said.

  Hunter lifted her pack from the couch, set it on the coffee table, pulled the Gold from a side pouch.

  Mandy whispered something under her breath and approached like she was afraid she might startle the sphere if she moved too quickly. She knelt, brought her face close. “Can I touch it?” Tapping her forehead, she added, “I’m Mandy, by the way.” She offered her hand to Hunter. “I probably should have started with that, then asked if I could handle your priceless sphere.”

  Clearly still not happy about the situation, Hunter nodded. “Go on.”

  Mandy lifted it as Dom leaned in at her elbow. He reached out, ran a finger over the top of it.

  “Either of you know how to find a good lawyer?” Sully asked. Were there lawyers who specialized in spheres? He had no idea.

  Evidently his friends didn’t, either. “I could ask my parents, but it would be hard to do that without telling them what it’s about.” Mandy set the Gold back on the table.

  Tilting her head, she studied the sphere. “Weird.” She picked it up, set it down again.

  Her hand froze, hovering above it. “Did you see that?”

  “See what?” Sully asked.

  Mandy lifted the Gold and set it on the table yet again.

  It shifted ever so slightly toward the table’s edge.

  “Did you see?” Mandy picked it up, set it down closer to the center of the table.

  It shifted again, in the same direction.

  “The table’s not level,” Hunter said.

  “That’s probably it.” Mandy picked up the Gold, took it into the kitchen. The rest of them watched from the living room as Mandy set it on the kitchen table.

  Even from there, Sully could see it shift slightly.

  “It did it again. Same direction.” She looked at Sully. “Do you have a sphere I can see for a minute? Doesn’t matter what color.”

  Sully went to his room, grabbed the Army Green from his desk, where it sat alongside three commons that hadn’t sold on eBay. He brought it out to Mandy. She set it on the kitchen table.

  It sat there, not budging a millimeter.

  Mandy picked up the Army Green. “Here, catch.” She tossed it across the room to Dom. “Set it down on the coffee table.”

  Dom did. No shift.

  “Now why would that be?” Mandy asked, her voice low. She knelt, set the Gold on the linoleum floor.

  It shifted.

  “It’s always in the same direction,” Sully said.

  “Maybe it’s lopsided,” Hunter suggested.

  “That’s possible,” Mandy said. She lifted it straight up, set it right back down.

  Again, it rolled ever so slightly.

  “That’s just freaky,” Dom said.

  He went and knelt beside Mandy, lifted the Gold, then set it down.

  They all watched it tilt.

  Sully’s skin was prickling. It was as if the sphere was alive, or something was moving inside it.

  Mandy stood, put her hands on her hips. Brushing her hair behind her ears, she pointed in the direction the Gold was leaning, which was toward Sully’s bedroom. “Which way is that?” She looked at Sully. “Do you have a compass?”

  “What do I look like, a Boy Scout?” Sully closed his eyes, visualized the apartment building. McDonald’s and Price Chopper were in that direction. The sun set over the roof of Price Chopper.

  “West.”

  Mandy slumped a little. “I was hoping it was north. That might mean the Gold acts like a compass for some reason.”

  “What would make it pull west?” Dom asked. “What’s west?”

  Nothing was west. If it was drawn toward water, the Atlantic Ocean was closer. It was morning, so the sun was in the east, which meant it wasn’t pulled toward sunlight. But that was exactly what it looked like—like something was pulling it.

&nb
sp; What if it was something closer, maybe something in his room? What was in his room, though?

  Spheres.

  “Hold on. I think I’ve got it.” Sully sprang up, carried the Gold into his room with everyone following. His hands were shaking. If it was attracted to spheres, they could use it to find more. He pulled the three spheres from his desk and placed them on the floor in the center of his room, then set the Gold on the floor. He let it go.

  It shifted west, away from the spheres.

  “Damn,” Sully hissed.

  “That was a brilliant thought, though,” Mandy said. “If something is attracting it, other spheres make the most sense—” She inhaled sharply. “Wait. Oh, my God.”

  “What?” Dom asked.

  Mandy’s eyes were wide. They shifted back and forth, as if she was tracking something invisible to the rest of them. “What if it is attracted to a sphere? But only one.”

  “The other Gold,” Hunter said.

  Mandy nodded. “Assuming there’s only one.”

  Sully froze. The other Gold?

  “Oh, my freaking God,” Dom whispered. “That makes so much sense.”

  It was just a guess. Maybe the Gold was drawn toward redwood trees, or movie stars, or Japan. Maybe it wasn’t drawn toward anything; maybe it moved for a reason they didn’t understand, just like they didn’t understand the spheres themselves.

  Only, in some ways the spheres made more sense than anything. Magenta spheres always gave you night vision and Lemon Yellows always made you taller. You always needed exactly two to burn in order to gain what they offered.

  “They could be like polar opposites, drawn toward each other,” Mandy said.

  Sully looked at Hunter. She was staring at the Gold, but her eyes had a faraway look.

  They snapped back into focus as she looked at Sully. “What would the pair be worth?”

  Sully picked up the Gold. There was no telling. If someone bought both, he or she could burn them and find out what they did. That made them way more valuable. “Even if Mandy’s right, though, it could be anywhere. It could be in Russia.” He didn’t need a second Gold; he was already set for life. Even if Sully’s mom would let him hop in a car or on a plane and chase the Gold’s match, which she definitely wouldn’t, it wasn’t worth the risk. They should sell the Gold and be done with it.