Authors: Sarah Cross

Dull Boy (17 page)

BOOK: Dull Boy

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When we get to the dark and deserted scenic overlook, Jacques unlocks the car doors and gets out. “Where’s your friend Nicholas?”

Sophie lets out a long sigh, blowing glitter off the tip of her nose. “He ran off. We were talking and . . . he got upset.”

Jacques is convincing—you have to give him that. His icy model face thaws a little, so that he’s wearing a concerned expression. Almost like he genuinely cares. “Do you want me to drive around and look for him?”

“We don’t need your help,” Darla growls, flinging herself into the backseat, her body an angry tangle of hot-pink velvet tracksuit. “He’d be fine if your mom wasn’t filling his head with lies and making him stupid promises.”

“Stop it!” Sophie hisses. “Jacques didn’t do anything!”

“Yet!” Darla hisses back.

“Um, I’ve got it covered,” I say, almost—but not quite—feeling bad for Jacques. “I saw where he went. I’ll take a look for him and see if I can get him home.”

Jacques nods and slides into the driver’s seat, like he’s relieved to not have to deal with us anymore tonight. Sophie squeezes my hand.

“Good luck, Avery. I know you can do this. I have faith in you.” Then she pops up on one foot and kisses my cheek, totally out of nowhere. It’s odd—it’s the opposite cheek from the one Cherchette kissed the night I met her, but my face burns with almost the same intensity: fire instead of ice.

“Thanks,” I say.

The Jaguar peels away, and I swear it comes
this
close to running over my foot.

Not that I would feel it. I’m in a daze for a sec—then I snap out of it. My body goes on autopilot: I have a mission.

I have to find Nicholas.

· D. CARMINE · FILE #00373
Nicholas Brighter: ORIGIN STORY

* SECURITY LEVEL: Top Secret

* CATEGORY: Autobiographical Account

NOTE:
The following account was written by Nicholas Brighter approximately three and a half months after his power manifested, and delivered to Darla Carmine
in the interest of furthering her research.—D.C.

Itry not to put down roots when we settle into a new town, because I know before long we’ll have to move
again—but I can’t help it. People and places stick with me; I close my eyes and I can picture them perfectly, with this weird sort of longing for the lives I never got to finish.

I remember playing war with my best friend in Florida, trampling the cilantro in my mom’s garden while we shot each other with my older brothers’ paintball guns—and I can still see the movie theater where I got my first kiss like it’s painted on the back of my eyelids. I get nostalgic for the house on the cul-de-sac in Virginia, when Brock and Jake still lived at home, and alternated torturing me with being the best brothers you could ever have. When they weren’t tying me up in a sleeping bag and leaving me hanging from a tree in the backyard (true story), they’d take me to the beach or to get ice cream, and they’d let me ride in the back of the truck with my dog.

Back then, I was free to explore and build forts and play my guitar (badly). If I wanted to roam the woods for hours with my dog, Boots, looking for goblins or orcs behind trees . . . no one really minded. My dad was so busy obsessing over my brothers—their grades, how much time they spent benched or on the field, and whether they’d be admitted to the Academy—that I barely entered his radar.

Sometimes I wish I could go back, return to a place where I was just
myself,
not an inferior successor to Brock and Jake. I wish my family could’ve settled somewhere, instead of moving to a new state just as high school was starting, when all the cliques are preformed and airtight and if you’re new and you’re a little unusual, there’s no room to squeeze in.

“So make room,” my dad would say—like it’s that easy. I don’t have the commanding personality he has; or Brock’s physique, girls falling all over him and guys giving him respect; or Jake’s charisma, always making everyone laugh, fitting in wherever he goes. When you have someplace to disappear to (for me it’s music), it’s easy to just do it. To not make that extra effort so people notice you, so they
want
to get to know you.

The only reason I even met Darla is because my dad knows her dad through work. We clicked; she was willing to try things I was interested in, and she was full of life and craziness, always ambitious: scheming, inventing, creating. I taught her the rules for Warhammer, this tabletop strategy game I like, and we’d go to war in my basement for hours.

My dad hated it; still does. “Why do you have to coop yourself up like a vampire?” “Go outside; throw the ball around.” “You hang around girls all the time, you’re gonna turn into one.” Jake and Brock were away by then; Jake in the Academy, Brock serving in the U. S. Navy. And married! My oldest brother’s life was set up perfectly, exactly what my dad wanted. Only he couldn’t be satisfied—because he wanted that for
all
of us.

With no other guy in the house to micromanage, he turned to me. It started to irritate him that I was a “loner,” didn’t want to watch the game with him, and so on. I’d play my guitar, and he’d make fun of me for wanting to be a “rock star”—almost like if he picked at me enough, I’d lose interest and just live his life instead.

The stress was building. I spent more hours tossing and turning than actually sleeping; and when I did sleep, I woke up drenched in sweat. I’d crawl out of bed to go through my old photo albums, amazed by pictures of myself smiling, or acting goofy with old friends—what had happened to that kid? I’d curl up with Boots on the floor, like he was my rock instead of my dog. He was loyal. He was the one friend I’d never had to leave behind when we moved. He knew me; he stayed with me.

I always liked hugging Boots—he was kind of old by then, but when we first brought him home, he was almost as big as I was. I used to hang on to him, burying my face in his fur when I was upset, and I guess I never grew out of it. My dad would’ve hated that if he’d known—that I was a teenager and still crying into my dog’s fur.

All I wanted was to be somewhere else—
anywhere
else—but especially a place that felt like home. I felt like I would die if I had to stay here.

One night my dad’s friend stopped by with his perfect teenage son: strong, athletic, confident; looked you in the eye when he spoke to you. I was messing around on my guitar and my dad forced me to come out—then spent the whole time ragging on my clothes, my hair, and laughing about what a wuss I was. Like he could somehow separate himself from his freak son by pointing out everything that was supposedly wrong with me. All in good fun, of course.

By the time they left and I got back to my room, I was crying so hard I couldn’t breathe. Boots was licking my face at first, and then he started whining, but my ears started to buzz with this high-pitched drone and I couldn’t hear him anymore. My field of vision closed off; everything around me got fuzzy and gray. Pain pierced my chest, like something was breaking inside.

I hugged Boots tighter, like he could fix me. Like it wouldn’t hurt as much if I wasn’t alone.

I should have pushed him away. Thrown something, screamed even, so he’d leave me.

But I didn’t know.

Before I could make sense of the strange suction, the pain, the papers flying off my desk like they’d been swept up by a whirlwind . . . Boots was gone. He warped before my eyes; folded up into a tiny sliver of his former self and vanished.
Into me.

I absorbed him. I destroyed him.

I was in denial at first: Boots was gone, but maybe he ran away. Shouldn’t that be more possible than, than—
what happened
? I roamed the neighborhood searching for him. I asked neighbors, strangers, whether they’d seen him.

A week or so passed. I was in the basement, arranging my Warhammer figures into armies, listening to my parents “discuss” me upstairs, their voices traveling through the vents. How I was never like this
before:
sullen, uncommunicative, possibly depressed. Their speculation made me sick—Boots might be
dead
. What did it matter why I wore all black or didn’t talk to them anymore?

I contemplated running away—but where would I go? Did I think I could move in with Brock’s family? I was slamming my Warhammer figures down when my vision started to fade again. A jolt went through me—the way I imagine it feels to be hit with a defibrillator.

I seized the table; clutched my chest with my other hand.

I didn’t know how to react when my hand sank into nothing, into cold chaos that smelled like smoke, into a vortex that tore my body in half.

My Warhammer figures were swept up almost instantly: dull blades that pelted me like bullets, until my entire collection had disappeared and the vortex exhausted itself.

That night was the end of my denial. The beginning of my dread. Somehow I had imprisoned something evil in my body—I was as wrong and terrible as my parents thought. Only worse—because who could imagine something as twisted as this? When I met Sophie via Darla, and later Cherchette . . . I realized there was more to it. I wasn’t evil so much as
changed
. But knowing that doesn’t make up for anything I’ve done. It’s only a matter of time before someone else I care about becomes a victim.

Cherchette calls my power
extraordinary
. I call it unforgivable.

Sometimes I wonder . . . why I can’t just absorb myself and be done with it.

THE KID WORRIES ME—
I don’t think I’m being a bad friend if I say that. He’s going through all this stuff that I can only
try
to understand. I’ve got my own personal darkness, but Nicholas is trapped in his—and I’m afraid I’m not good enough to show him the way out. If a genius like Darla and somebody as positive as Sophie can’t make Nicholas see himself as something more than a destructive force, how am I supposed to?

By the time I catch up to him, he’s sitting outside a convenience store with his back to a bright red soda machine that lights up the night. The way he’s slouched there in his trench coat, with his face damp and that vague look of despair on his face, it’s almost as good as a neon sign asking the cops to pick him up.

“You figure on getting a ride from the POPO?” I say. He doesn’t even crack a smile at the lame slang attempt, which is eerie—I thought for sure I could lighten the mood a little. I try a different tack. “Your dad’s kind of a hard-ass, right? You sure you want to do that to yourself?”

He rolls his head against the soda machine. Bangs it once, startling me. “How long do you think this can last, Avery?”

“Last? You mean your power?”

“Just . . . this state of instability. How long can it really go on like this?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “But I’m sure it’ll get better. I mean, even your voice is screwed up for a while before it changes. Your body just has to adapt. And . . .” I’m fumbling; I feel so ill-equipped to talk about this. What the hell do I know?

“I mean, you’re not the only one who screws up. I broke a guy’s arm wrestling last season, but . . .” I swallow, flashing back to the gunman in the antiques store. “But it doesn’t mean I’m going to maim people for the rest of my life.”

“No . . .” Nicholas says. “But hurting people is—for you it’s like an unfortunate side effect. For me, that
is
my power. I destroy things.”

“As far as you know,” I remind him.

He coughs out a bitter laugh. “Yes. As far as I know. But since no other option has presented itself, that’s what I have to think about every time it activates and something disappears. Not very comforting when that ‘thing’ is alive.”

“Yeah, but . . .” Damn it. I’m so far out of my league. I don’t want to say the wrong thing and be the one to push him over the edge. And when I try to put a positive spin on his situation, I almost feel like I’m disrespecting him, like I’m lying to his face and we both know it. Even though I’m not sure that’s true . . . “You could use it for good, too. Once you learned to control it. You could . . . um, protect the environment by absorbing trash and . . . cutting down on landfills?”

I wince. Now that it’s out of my mouth, I realize how idiotic that sounds.

“Thanks, Avery. I feel so much better.” More bitter laughter, like he’s halfway to breaking down. “With that to look forward to, I don’t know what I’m worried about.”

“Sorry,” I say. “I’m not good at this. That didn’t come out right.”

“That’s because there’s nothing else to say. You know it and I know it. It’s not your fault.” Nicholas shrugs and stands up, his face void of emotion, like he doesn’t care anymore—which worries me more than his prelude-to-crying face.

“Come on,” he says. “We might as well get out of here.”