Burning Midnight (5 page)

Sully took a break from wading through a book on the California gold rush and glanced around the library. He and Dom had chosen a desk by tall windows that looked out onto the parking lot.

Taking in the view, he tried to identify places where spheres might be hidden as practice for tomorrow. He couldn't wait to go hunting.

He was also curious about Hunter. He had considered stalking her on Facebook, but decided she wasn't the type to have a Facebook account.

He pulled out his phone, opened the Facebook app. What the hell, it didn't hurt to try.

His search returned three Hunters in the New York metro area. Hunter number one, from Queens, was a guy who'd taken a selfie with his French bulldog. The second, from Scarsdale, didn't have a picture—just a shot of a latte in a coffee shop. The third Hunter, the only one from the Bronx, was also a guy.

Sully wasn't surprised, but he was disappointed. He wanted to know more about her—who her friends were, what music she listened to, what she thought was worth sharing with the world.

Taking a deep breath, he turned back to his book.

“How do you make yourself give a shit about everything so intensely?”

Sully looked up at Dom. “What do you mean?”

Dom gestured toward the book. “I mean, you're working on that history paper like it's the freaking Magna Carta. This weekend you'll bust your ass at the flea market.” He shrugged. “My grades are just about underwater, but I can't make myself care. I just want to have a good workout and meet girls.”

“You care about things. They're just different things from me.”

“Yeah. I care deeply about losing my virginity. But who doesn't?” Dom made a face. “Look at that douche bag.”

Sully followed Dom's gaze. A guy Sully didn't know—probably a junior or senior—was sitting at a table near the checkout desk, speed-reading a book. He'd scan the page on the left for two seconds, then the page on the right, then turn the page using his palm so it made as much noise as possible. He had a handful of brag buttons on his shoulder. Besides Burnt Orange (speed-reading), he had Periwinkle (good with numbers), Indigo (enhanced eyesight), Violet (verbal acuity), and Hot Pink (adrenaline rush—handy when you had to pull an all-nighter). He didn't have the ultra-rare, million-dollar college helpers—Canary Yellow (perfect memory) and Mustard (high IQ). The guy had everything else, though. A pair of Periwinkles alone would have cost his parents over a hundred thousand. He'd probably been there cheering Alex Holliday last Saturday night.

“He can't just enjoy all those advantages his daddy bought him. He's got to show off,” Dom said. “I can't stand people like that.”

“I know.”

Sully hated kids who could afford to burn spheres. Although hating them made him kind of a hypocrite, because if he had the money, he'd burn some too. The speed-reader must be a moron, though, if he was at Yonkers High. Most of the kids loaded up as well as him were at the Masten Academy for the Gifted.

Of course, they could all be fake. Bootlegged brag buttons were a hell of a lot cheaper than spheres, and anyone could flip through pages and pretend they were speed-reading.

Dom closed his notebook, grabbed the books he was checking out for an English assignment. “You ready? I could use a Sprite or something.”

Sully stowed his stuff in his backpack, then followed Dom to the checkout desk.

“You talk to Mandy since last Saturday?” Dom asked, keeping his voice low. Dom handed his books across the counter to the librarian. He pulled out his library card and handed it to her as well.

“Nope. We should invite her to hang out.”

“That's what I was thinking.”

“There you go, Mr. Cucuzza.” Ms. Yonke, the librarian, handed Dom his books.

“Cucuzza,” a voice behind them said, laughing.

Dom turned. Sully stepped out of the way as his friend, mouth tight, nostrils flared, stalked over to the speed-reader.

“You got a problem with my name?” Dom asked.

The speed-reader was a big guy with smooth red cheeks.

“I just…,” he said, his voice a little tight. Chances were, the guy couldn't resist showing off his enhanced hearing, given the chance. Only he hadn't thought about how Dom might react.

“You just what? You just can't help being a douche bag?”

The speed-reader's red cheeks went crimson. He looked Dom up and down, sizing him up. The guy had maybe thirty pounds and four inches on Dom, but it was easy to see from Dom's bull neck, the way his shoulders filled out his brown leather jacket, that Dom wasn't someone you wanted to mess with.

The guy swallowed. “I was just saying your name.”

Dom glared at him a heartbeat longer, then turned to Sully. “Let's go.”

They headed back to study hall.

Sully would never forget that day in sixth grade when Haley Hinton told Dom his uncle was on CNN, then showed him on her phone. It was ironic, that Anthony Cucuzza was more infamous for walking into the Met and destroying hundreds of priceless works of art with an AK-47 than some people were for shooting living, breathing people.

The week before, Dom's aunt Terry had left Tony for a guy she'd met where she worked, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Uncle Tony got back at her by destroying the things she loved most in the world.

“What a tool,” Sully said as they walked.

“I hope my uncle's miserable in prison. I hope the food is rancid and his cell mate is an art-loving skinhead.”

It was a weird bond they shared, being known for something. At least Sully was known for something he'd done. Dom had to live with a last name that was a verb through no fault of his own.

“How come you always wear gloves?” Sully asked. They'd been driving up the Palisades Parkway in silence for the past ten minutes.

Hunter turned her head, gave him a badass glare.

“I'm not saying I don't like them. They look good on you. I'm just curious why you wear them, even in the car with the heat on.”

Hunter licked her upper lip, closed her eyes for a second, like she was trying to muster patience. “I don't know, my hands are cold all the time. My blood must be thin.”

“I have a cousin who has poor circulation in her fingers and toes—”

“Take this exit.” Hunter pointed at the sign for Exit 19: Bear Mountain State Park.

“Bear Mountain?” Sully asked, trying to picture where they'd hunt there.

Hunter smiled. “Sure looks that way, doesn't it?”

He'd been to Bear Mountain a couple of times as a kid. There was a little zoo, a big lodge, and a mountain. Not many good places to hunt. Sully put on his blinker, got in the right lane.

On the ride he'd learned Hunter's parents were dead, that she “mostly” lived in an apartment with “a bunch” of roommates. He wanted to ask what her life was like, but she didn't seem eager to talk about life in the Bronx. Mostly she wanted to talk about spheres. That was fine with Sully.

“You ever burn any?” Sully asked.

“Me? Nah. One day when I can afford it, there are a few I want. How about you?”

Sully pulled into the drive that led to the Bear Mountain parking lot. “Same story. Can't afford it. So how'd you find your way to a flea market all the way out in Yonkers, anyway?”

“Found you on the Internet, thought I'd see if you paid fair prices. There aren't many independent dealers left in the city, and Holliday's and the other superstores rip you off, so I'm always on the lookout.”

As soon as Sully put the car in park, Hunter jumped out. Sully followed as she turned away from the lodge and zoo, and headed toward the mountain.

“We're going hunting in the woods?” If there was one thing everyone knew about finding spheres, it was that not many were hidden in nature. Once in a while someone found one wedged in a tree or stuffed in an old gopher hole on the prairie, but most were hidden in and around man-made structures.

Hunter's eyes were bright with excitement. She was walking so fast that Sully strained to keep up with her. “Yes and no. We're going to Doodletown.”

“Doodletown?” He'd never heard of Doodletown. It sounded like a joke. A made-up place.

Hunter pulled a folded page from her back pocket and handed it to Sully. “Once upon a time there was a little town called Doodletown, about three miles from here. Seventy houses, a school, a church. Two stores. The last residents left in 1965, and it became a ghost town. Ten years after that, the buildings were bulldozed. All that's left are a dozen foundations, a few walls, and two graveyards.”

Sully scanned the Wikipedia entry Hunter had printed out, his smile growing bigger as he read.

“When you're picking sites, you have to keep in mind, you don't know what's already been searched. You could break into an abandoned factory in the city, and it looks like the best place in the world to find marbles, but ten people have already gone through it with a fine-tooth comb. This late in the game, the key is coming up with places other pros wouldn't think to look.”

“You really thought this out.”

Hunter looked at him. “It's all I think about.” They reached the sidewalk that ran along the base of Bear Mountain, and paused. “One day I'm going to make a big score. Maybe not a Cherry Red like you, but big. Chocolate. Mustard. Olive…”

Sully nodded. Those were million-dollar marbles. He watched Hunter's face as she gazed toward the summit, her dark eyes blazing. She saw him looking. He looked away, at the mountain.

Through the trees he scanned the snow-covered boulders that filled the lower half of the climb. He used to get a kick out of climbing around on those rocks as a kid.

“Six miles, round-trip. I hope you're in shape.” Hunter hopped onto a rock, sprang across a little gap to the next. Sully followed. He'd keep up if it killed him.

The narrow trail they'd been hiking opened onto a wider road heading uphill. Trying not to let on how out of breath he was, Sully fell into step beside Hunter.

“You in any particular camp about what they are?” he asked.

Hunter shook her head. “I like it that no one knows. Whatever you want to believe—that they're proof God exists, that they're from another dimension, that aliens left them—no one can tell you you're wrong. You can't laugh at someone else's ideas if yours are just as crazy. And they're all crazy. How can they not be?”

Sully couldn't argue with that.

The weirdest part to him was that they were hidden. If they'd all just appeared at random one day, that would be one thing, but they'd appeared in hiding places. That was one of the arguments the God camp used. The spheres were hidden, and that meant an intelligence was behind it, and that meant God. Or Satan.

A steel sign on a tree announced that they were entering Doodletown. To their right, a concrete walk ran up a hill, leading nowhere. A few hundred yards farther along they came to a three-sided stone wall surrounding nothing but snow and weeds. It looked to be a building foundation.

Hunter consulted the map she'd printed out and pushed past the foundation, toward the trees beyond. “Let's start at the farthest point and work our way back.”

At first Sully just watched Hunter work, and she didn't question this. He wanted to pull his weight, and before he could do that he needed to see how she approached the job.

Hunter worked methodically. Her first target was a low stone wall overgrown with vines and brambles. Squatting, crawling, sometimes snaking along on her belly, Hunter worked the crevices, especially down low. She checked for loose stones, and when she found one she pulled it out, checked the crevice, then replaced the stone. After finishing the wall she went to work on what the map identified as the second schoolhouse, starting at one corner of the stone foundation.

Sully watched a little longer, then joined her, moving in the opposite direction around the low stone foundation.

He was grateful it was the middle of winter, otherwise they'd be taking their lives into their hands jamming their fingers into crevices. Timber rattlers and copperheads would be all over these woods in the summer.

“Hey!” Hunter called. She held up an Army Green (resistance to the common cold, rarity one) for Sully to see before stashing it in her backpack. “At least now we know this place hasn't been picked over by a pro.” Sully's cut of the sixty dollars they'd probably get for it would cover gas.

After a couple of hours of hunting, Sully's toes were numb. He and Hunter went from headstone to headstone in the cemetery, running their fingers along the base, seeking chipmunk holes. Some of the headstones were from the late 1700s. None were hiding spheres.

Hunter jotted notations on the map, plumes of condensation wafting from her mouth. “Let's take a look at this mine.” She spun, headed into the woods to the left. She was always looking around, scanning the ground by her feet, the low branches of trees. Always hunting.

Sully had pictured the mine as a cave that ran horizontally in the side of a hill, but it was nothing but a hole going straight into the ground, roped off so no one would accidentally stumble into it.

Hunter pulled a coiled length of blue and black cord out of her pack and tied one end to a nearby tree.

“You're going down there?” Sully asked, peering into the hole.

Hunter paused, shot him a questioning look. “Don't worry, Yonkers. Just me. You stay up here in case someone needs to run for help.”

When Sully had told her he'd grown up in Yonkers, she'd nodded, saying she knew he wasn't a city boy.

“Whatever you say, Bronx,” he shot back.

Hunter turned. “That's
the
Bronx. It's the only place important enough that they had to put a
the
in front of it. You don't say
the
Manhattan, or
the
California, only
the
Bronx.”

Sully cleared his throat. “Excuse me. I have to go to
the
bathroom and use
the
toilet.”

“You ought to get into stand-up comedy.” With that, Hunter lowered herself hand over hand, quickly disappearing into the mine. He'd expected her to pull out more equipment—clamps and a harness, maybe—but the cord was it.

Grasping the cord with one hand, Sully watched it rub against the stone, shifting back and forth as Hunter descended.

Ten minutes later, she reappeared, pulling herself out of the hole with ease.

“You're like Spider-Man,” Sully said.

Hunter laughed as she untied the rope from the tree. “I do a decent amount of climbing in the city.”

Sully knew not to ask where in the city she'd need to climb. Hunter had made it clear information related to hunting was strictly on a need-to-know basis.

Consulting the map, Hunter pointed downhill. “The other schoolhouse is that way.” They were running out of places to look. Sully was disappointed they had only found the one common, but relieved that before too long they'd be in his heated car.

As they headed down the hill, he stifled a yawn.

“You look tired,” Hunter said.

“I haven't been sleeping much lately. Some nights it takes me a couple of hours to fall asleep, then I wake up at three or four and the thoughts start spinning and that's it, I can't get back to sleep.”

Her eyes softened, the mischievous twinkle gone. “Yeah. I know about that.”

They cleared a rise and stepped into a space littered with old tires, a rusting refrigerator, the front axle of a wagon, and plenty of broken glass.

Hunter stopped, took a few steps back to the edge of what was obviously the Doodletown dump. She got on her knees. “I'll start over here.” She pointed. “Why don't you start at that end?”

Sully surveyed the dump for a moment. “If we search this whole area it's going to be too dark to find our way back.” The truth was, he was cold and tired. He wanted to go home and watch TV.

Hunter looked at the sky. “We'll leave ourselves time to make it back. It's downhill, so it'll be quicker. Let's search as much of this as we can. We can come back if we don't finish.”

As Sully knelt on the frozen ground and ran his hand inside the rim of a tire, he realized something. As deadly serious as he thought he was about this, Hunter was more serious. Or more desperate. In the car she claimed she'd been hunting full-time for the past two years, and if she really meant full-time, she wasn't in school. She had no parents to fall back on. This was all she had. The worst bottom line for Sully was living in a basement in Pittsburgh, and although his mom kept warning him that they'd probably be moving there this summer, he had to admit it was nothing compared with what Hunter faced every day.

Sully watched her in the fading light as she brushed snow off the ground, her eyebrows pinched, all of her attention on the hunt.

He imitated her movements, brushing drifts of snow off rusty tin cans and broken glass. What must it be like, doing this every day? He'd always romanticized the life of hunters, but now he saw it wasn't all excitement. It was a tedious, detail-oriented job.

He exposed a corner of a glass jar, dug around it, clearing dead leaves. It was a mason jar, tinged pink. Either that, or the food someone had stored inside had turned pink over the years….

“Oh,” Sully said. He leaned closer, squinting. Beneath the smoky glass was a pink curve. “Oh,” he said again, his tone pinched with dread, as if he'd found something that might be awful. A skull, or a finger. But what he dreaded was that he might be wrong about what he suspected that delicious pink curve was.

Hunter rose. “What is it? Did you find something?”

Sully felt around in the snow, found a stone, and brought it down on the jar. “Oh. Please let it be—”

The top of a Hot Pink sphere peeked through the hole.

“It is.
It is.
Oh, my God.” He smashed the sharp edges of the broken jar until he could reach in. Fingers working frantically, he tugged at the hard, slick surface until the sphere came loose.

Sully stood and held it to his face as Hunter shrieked.

Hot Pink. There was no mistaking that color. Hot Pink.

Shouting in pure primordial joy, Hunter collided with him. He shoved the sphere into her hand, wrapped his arms around her waist, and lifted her in the air. She held the Hot Pink over her head as they whooped.

It was a rarity five, worth, what? Twelve thousand dollars? More, if he found the right buyer.

Sully put Hunter down. She held the sphere out to him and he put his hand over the top of it, partially covering both of her hands.

“Oh, my God. I can't believe it,” he said.

“I've never found a five before. I've never found a
four
before.” She raised a hand to her mouth; it was shaking. “I can get my own place. I can buy an old motorcycle to get around.”

“You'll still let me tag along once you have your own ride, won't you?”

Hunter grinned. “Are you kidding? Mr. Cherry Red. Big marbles roll right out of their hiding places when you're around.”

It wasn't a Cherry Red, not even close, but his share would be, what, close to five thousand dollars? It bought them time. It meant Sully didn't have to leave his friends, his school, or his town, at least for another year. And they'd find more. Maybe when he showed his mom the cash she'd look the other way and let him cut school one day a week.

They found the path out of Doodletown and headed down the mountain.

A half mile on, the trail broke out onto a dazzling view of the Bear Mountain Bridge crossing the Hudson River, with mountains beyond.