Hellraisers

 

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FOR LUCY
FOR AVALON
FOR JELLYBEAN

(
SORRY, WE DON'T KNOW WHAT YOUR NAME IS YET!)

THANKS TO ALL OF YOU FOR MAKING ME A VERY PROUD AND VERY HAPPY DAD!

 

PART I

NEW WORLD

 

HELLRAISER

That was the trouble with being a hellraiser.

Sometimes you got burned.

Marlow Green knew this better than anyone. How many times had he heard it? From his teachers, when he got kicked out of class. From the principals, when he got kicked out of
schools
. From his mom, over and over.
You set fire to the world and you run, Marly.
And he did. Not literally—hellraiser, yes; arsonist, definitely not—but he lit up the world around him, started wildfires that burned through bridges, that sent his friends and his family packing, that spat and roared into his future, destroying it before he could even get there. Then, when it got too hot, he turned and bolted.

One of these days you're gonna start a fire that can't be put out,
his mom had told him.
One you can't ever run fast enough to escape.
And he'd always wondered when that would be, always wondered what he'd have to do to ignite an inferno of that magnitude.

Turned out the answer to the first question was now. And the second? Yeah, that would be carving a certain part of the male anatomy into the paintwork of his principal's car.

They came for him during class. They didn't knock, just barged in through the door like they were raiding a meth lab instead of math. Half the kids were dozing off, staring out the dirty windows at the blazing June sunshine that drenched Staten Island. The sight of three school cops and the principal flooding into the room like a dark, cold current made everyone jump.

“Green!” growled the principal, Mr. Caputo, a scarecrow of a man drowning in his cheap suit. He pointed a blade-like finger at Marlow. “That's him.”

Oh, crap.

The biggest of the three cops pushed his way through the desks. Everyone called him Yogi because he was always confiscating kids' lunches, then scarfing them. That and the fact he was a major fat-ass. His eyes were two raisins drowning in the doughy flesh of his face and he smiled wickedly at Marlow with sausage lips.

“Got you.”

Marlow blew out a long sigh and sat back in his chair, feeling the heat on his cheeks. He chewed the skin of his knuckles the way he always did when he was stressed. His windpipe was already starting to crackle, like static, and he wondered whether he should use his inhaler now before things heated up. He decided against it, not wanting to look weak in front of the class.

Another cop swept between the desks with an expression like murder. The third cop stayed by the door, her holster open, hand on the butt of her pistol.

“For the love of…” Charlie Alvarez sat at the desk next to him, running a hand through his mess of dark hair and popping gum. “Dude, what did you do now?”

“Me?” Marlow smiled at his best friend—his
only
friend—coughing to clear his throat. “Absolutely nothing. I'm being framed.”

Yogi stepped in front of the window, blocking the sun and making the room feel ten degrees colder. He reached out and grabbed a fistful of Marlow's shirt with his free hand.

“Get your flabby hands off him, Yogi,” yelled Charlie. “He didn't do nothing.”

“This isn't your business, Alvarez,” Caputo said, turning to Marlow and doing his best to stab him to death with his eyes. “Too far, Mr. Green,” he spat, flecks of spittle spraying like gems against the sun.

“I'm sorry?” Marlow replied, as innocently as he could.

“You've gone too far. There's no way back from this.”

“I'm not sure what you think I did,” Marlow said, feeling his windpipe tighten and cursing his asthma for making him so weak. He snatched in a breath. “I'm just sitting in class, minding my own—”

“Get him up,” Caputo said. “Take him outside.”

Yogi obeyed, hauling Marlow out of his chair so hard that it toppled over behind him. Charlie was out of his just as quick, squaring up to the cop even though he was half his size.

“That's assault,” he said. “You got no right.”

“I said drop it, Alvarez,” the principal replied. “This shi—This
idiot
isn't worth ruining your life for.”

“Yeah, kid,” said Yogi. “Sit down.”

“Or what? You gonna eat me?”

The whole class laughed at that, somebody lobbing a crunched-up ball of paper at the cop's big, bald head. Yogi glanced at the other two cops but they just shrugged. Marlow laughed. He didn't blame them. Charlie was tiny, but he was scary as all hell when his blood was up.

“I'm glad you find this so amusing,” the principal said. “But I can assure you, you won't be laughing for long. Move.”

Yogi yanked his shirt and he started walking, coughing hard to release the pressure in his windpipe. Somebody in the class was clapping, and by the time he'd reached the door there was a full-on round of applause going on, complete with cheers and whistles. He turned and bowed to his audience before being bundled out of the room so abruptly he lost his footing. Yogi and the other two cops hoisted him up and it was like Marlow was penned in a prison of black cloth. Somehow the wiry principal managed to squeeze between them.

“You have no idea how much trouble you're in, Green,” he squawked.

“I still don't know what I'm supposed to have done.”

“So it wasn't you who scratched the hell out of my car?”

“Your car?” Marlow shook his head, trying to hold back the grin that wanted to explode across his face. “I didn't even know you had a car.”

“Green Prius, out in the lot.”

“You just admitted to driving a
Prius
?” came Charlie's voice, although Marlow couldn't see him past the circle of cops.

“The one that now has … has something scratched into the hood. Something obscene.” He showed Marlow a snapshot on his cell phone.

“It looks like a rocket ship to me,” said Marlow. “And it definitely wasn't my doing.”

“Really?” The man leaned toward him, his fists clenched so hard that his knuckles were white. “So the fact that it says ‘by M. Green' underneath is a lie, then?”

The laugh punched up from Marlow's throat so hard he couldn't hold it back. The truth was he'd done it that very morning, with his keys, while waiting for Charlie to turn up. It wasn't like Caputo didn't deserve it, he'd been on Marlow's case ever since he arrived at Victor G. Rosemount High School. The principal looked ready to start swinging punches, but instead he turned on his heels and walked briskly down the corridor.

“Bring him to my office, we have paperwork to fill out.”

That could only mean one thing. Marlow chewed his lip, feeling his heart drop into his sneakers. Yep, raise enough hell and you got burned—he knew that better than anyone. This was his third school in eight months, after all.

They climbed the short flight of steps that led to reception, crossing the foyer, past the security gate with its metal detectors. It had been the same in every other school, the long walk. Like he was being marched to his execution down the green mile.

The only difference this time was the police escort.

“Green,” said the principal over his shoulder. “I don't know why you're so determined to ruin your life before it has a chance to begin. You're fifteen years old and about three short steps away from incarceration. You do understand why you're here, don't you? At this facility?”

Yeah, he did. Victor G. was the last stop on the road to Loserville. It was the place you went when you'd been chucked out of every other remedial high school in the city, when you'd incinerated every other option. Marlow felt the familiar pressure in his chest, the storm there starting to rage. He coughed up some phlegm, swallowing hard, then clawing in a breath.

“You're a coward, Green. You run away from every shred of responsibility in your life, you burn every bridge. Cowards are not welcome here. If VGR doesn't want you, nowhere else does. And you can be damned sure that VGR
does not want you
.”

Marlow's blood was boiling too fiercely for him to find a reply. Yogi was holding his shirt so tight that it had become a noose around his neck, making it even harder for him to breathe. Charlie trotted along beside them, looking genuinely concerned now.

“You okay, dude?” he said. “You're going blue.”

“I'm fine,” he wheezed. But that was a lie. He was about as far from fine as it was possible to get. He sucked in some air through the straw of his windpipe, knowing that as soon as he got into the principal's office it would be over. He'd be given his marching papers, told to scram. Then it would be home to his mom, confession time again.

“Get back to class, Alvarez, unless you want to go down as an accessory,” the principal said. “There will be criminal charges, this time, Green. You hear me?”

Marlow tugged at his collar. Where the hell was all the oxygen? He eyed the main doors, the glorious sunshine beyond, twenty feet down the hallway, and all he wanted to do was run. Get the hell out of here. Escape while he still could. Charlie had backed off but caught his eye and shook his head. He knew him way too well.

They reached the door to the office and the principal pushed it open, disappearing into the darkness. Yogi shoved Marlow in after him. The room beyond was small, barely enough space for a desk and a couple of filing cabinets. It was dark, too, the window boarded over from where somebody had lobbed a brick through it a couple of weeks ago. It was too cramped in here, not enough air. The panic was like a punch to the lungs, paralyzing them. Marlow took a breath and nothing happened.

Don't seize,
he ordered himself, the panic like an acetylene torch behind his eyes.
Please, not an attack.
He couldn't handle the terror, the ambulance, the rush to get the nebulizer, not on top of everything else.