Silence - eARC (5 page)

“Okay, the next thing is, I am going to be doing a lot of messing around with your lappie,” he told her. “First, I have to turn a crap-ton of stuff off. Like, there is no way you’re going to be able to download updates. So updates will have to wait until you get somewhere there is wifi and you have a couple of hours to kill. Or until I get them, which will be when I get somewhere there is wifi and have a couple hours to kill.” He made a face.

“Is that a big deal?” she ventured.

He shook his head. “I’m going to give you an obscure browser in place of what you’re using, and nobody really targets it for viruses.” He pulled a thumb drive out of his pocket and began working. “Basically there is a lot of stuff that thinks you’re on broadband and wants to be connected all the time, and turning it off is a pain and hard unless you know what you’re looking for. Which I do.”

It was strange, sitting there in the silent house, listening to someone tap on the keyboard. She couldn’t remember ever not having music or something on. Or hearing people in the other apartments, maybe their TV or music, and street noises. It was really strange, hearing the house do random creaking noises, or a gust of wind rattling the glass in a window.

She got up and got Seth another soda, and leafed through a magazine she’d brought with her from the city. Finally, Seth was done.

“Here.” He plopped the laptop in her lap, plugged the phone cord into the back. “Double-click this—” he pointed to a new icon that said “Dialup.” “I’ve turned wifi off for now, otherwise your lappie will keep trying to find a connection.”

“Yeah,” she nodded. “I had to do that at home, otherwise it’d try to randomly connect to other peoples’ servers, and ewww. You never knew who was spoofing to hack your accounts.”

“Exactly!” he beamed at her, as if she had said something really clever. A box came up, and it was obvious where she was supposed to put what in for the new ISP. Her laptop immediately began to make all the weird noises his had, and she looked at him in alarm.

“No stress!” he told her. “The first was the dial tone, then the computer doing the dialing. Then the handshake signal—that’s your computer talking to the router at the ISP. Then the signal where it verifies your account. Then—” There was a sound like static that cut off. “—That was the clear signal, and now you’re in.”

He walked her through the really, really basic things he had set up for her. Flash was off. Most graphics were off. Email was this…well, it looked like a page of text. Facebook was
barely
possible, in an even more primitive version than was on her phone. “You probably won’t be able to shop,” he told her. “Most online stores need higher graphics than the connection will support. So what you need to do is get phone numbers and order catalogs. But hey, this is better than nothing, right?” He looked at her so hopefully, that she had to agree with him, but…it was kind of like trying to watch a movie on a TV where only a fourth of the pixels were working. Yeah, you got the idea, but it wasn’t…enjoyable.

But she thanked him as sincerely as she could, and the two of them went back to the bookstore. At least…she had people she could talk to now.

* * *

Three days later, she had given up on the trips to Makeout Hill. The texts from her friends had dwindled to a handful, and more of them had unfriended her. The only unsullied bright spot was the delivery of the mattress and goodies. Now, at least, her bedroom looked nice and she had a bed she could sleep on without ending up feeling like she’d slept on rocks. The featherbed had gone to rest on top of the equally bad mattress in one of the other three bedrooms upstairs.

Dad had sent her what had at first glance looked like a huge score, two enormous boxes of DVDs and CDs. But on closer inspection, they were all used, and three fourths of them were things she’d never watch or listen to. She had a pretty good idea that Dad had told Brenda to get movies and music, and Brenda had cleaned out a thrift store or three. She’d cherry-picked what she wanted, and left the rest in the boxes downstairs, only to find the boxes gone today. She had a pretty good notion that Mom had taken them for herself or to try to pawn for more beer money. Well, okay, it wasn’t as if it was anything she
wanted,
but now that she knew Mom had developed sticky fingers, she figured she’d better start locking her room when she wasn’t home. Which was depressing. You weren’t supposed to have to hide your stuff from your parents because your parents would
steal
it.

There were more of those creepy lawn gnomes around town, including one in the backyard of the house next door, and one in the front lawn of the house across the street. Where were they
coming
from anyway? And who would even want to buy one?

She was thinking about that as she browsed the bottom of a bookshelf at the back of Tim’s store, waiting for the others to arrive. Somehow, even without the Internet, Tim managed to get some pretty good stuff in.
Maybe it’s all just someone’s idea of an epic prank.
It wasn’t as if there was much to do here. Maybe someone had made the original, then made a mold so he could make lots of copies and was planting them around town to see who noticed and what they’d do. Kind of crazy, but bored people did crazy things sometimes.

The bell rang on the front door; Staci looked up, expecting to see her new friends. They had said they would be getting there around now. Instead…it was Dylan, still in his biker leathers. The way the sunlight streaming through the door hit his hair, it almost looked like he was wearing a halo. Once the door shut behind him, he turned to face Tim. Immediately, Tim’s face hardened. His entire posture changed; it was almost like he was ready to attack, or defend himself. Meanwhile, Dylan appeared nonchalant; a bit of a smirk, leaning against the wall next to the register. The two men were talking quietly; even in the relative silence of the bookstore, Staci couldn’t hear them. She didn’t want to eavesdrop…but she couldn’t help herself. Out of curiosity, she slowly walked forward, pretending to browse the shelves as she went.

“…I don’t care why you’re here. I just don’t want any trouble.”

Dylan cocked his head to the side. “Now, why do you think there’s going to be any trouble?”

“You know exactly what I mean. I want no part of any of it. Understand?”

Just then, Staci bumped her knee into the edge of a small table, letting out a yelp of pain as she stumbled forward. Dylan and Tim both stopped talking to look at her.

After a tense couple of seconds, Tim spoke. “I had forgotten you were back there.”

“I’m just waiting for the gang,” she said, and started to move back towards the coffee bar. “I didn’t interrupt anything, I hope…”

“Nothing important.” Dylan looked at Tim for a moment. “I think we understand each other.” As he turned and opened the door, he called over his shoulder. “Nice to see you again, Staci.”

Staci thought that Tim looked like he wanted to say something more, but Dylan was already gone. Before the door had closed behind him, it swung open again; her friends had arrived, all of them greeting Tim and talking amongst themselves as they made their way to Staci.

What was
that
all about?
She could understand a cop hassling Dylan; so far, he was the only person she’d seen in this town that even looked remotely like someone who might be in a biker gang. But why would Tim go after him? And what was that about “not wanting any trouble”?

“That guy that was leaving when you came in—” she said tentatively to the others. “You guys know him?”

The other four looked at each other, then at her. Wanda was the one who answered. “He’s been around here for a couple weeks. I mean, he kinda stands out like a sore thumb in all the grunge and plaid, right? But
I
never talked to him.”

“He’s never been in here before as far as I know,” Seth added, and looked at the now-closed door. “I wonder what he wanted.”

The group began settling in their usual chairs, Seth pulling out some printed-out character sheets and rulebooks; they were supposed to “roll up” some characters for that anime RPG today.

Staci tapped Seth on the shoulder. “I’ll be right back, guys. Don’t get too far ahead without me.”

“Hurry back! I’ll wait on explaining the rules…but it’ll take awhile when we get started.”

Staci walked up to the front of the store, stopping in front of the cash register. Tim still had the same look on his face from when he was talking to Dylan; it only softened when he looked at her.

“Who was that guy?” she asked, trying to sound casual. “You looked upset.”

Tim just shrugged. “Some drifter. Didn’t exactly look as if he was going to be interested in books, and I don’t need money badly enough to encourage him to loiter. Didn’t he know you? He knew your name.”

She paused before answering. “I literally ran into him my first morning here when I was looking for someplace to eat. Mom isn’t exactly good about keeping food in the house. He showed me where to find the diner, that’s all. But the way you were talking to him, I thought maybe you knew him.”

“No, and I don’t want to,” Tim said shortly. “I know his type, and that’s all I need to know. Anywhere a guy like that goes, there’s always trouble.” He looked as if he might say more about what kind of “trouble,” but then decided to stop. “Look,” he sighed. “I’m not your dad or your big brother, Staci, so I’m not going to try to tell you what to do. But you seem like a good kid. Be careful around that guy. It’ll keep me from getting any more gray hairs than I already have. Okay?”

“Sure,” she replied, and went back to the others. It was odd, though. Tim didn’t seem to be the kind of guy who…well…
judged
people. Practically ordering Dylan out of his store seemed out of character.

But she put it out of her mind, once Seth started in on his game stuff. She’d never done anything like this before, and it took all of her attention to keep it all straight.

Chapter Five

It was a Thursday night, the bookstore was closed, and Staci was sitting in the living room with her laptop plugged into the phone line, reading the Facebook pages of the people who
used
to be her friends. She nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard the back door open, and someone come inside.

She was looking for something to use for a weapon when her mom peered into the living room. “Oh, hey,” she said, vaguely waving in Staci’s direction. “I guess you’re settling in all right.”

Staci bit back a million angry things that surged into her mind, and just said, “I guess. You’re home early.”

“Bar’s pretty much empty so the boss sent me home,” her mom replied, and made a face. “Big baseball game, so the usual crowd all went out to a sports bar to watch it. Then they’ll come back tomorrow night and bitch all night about having to pay six bucks for a beer so they could watch the game. I’ll let you interweb in peace. Night, honey.”

Meaning, “I’m going to my room to drink myself to sleep,”
Staci thought, acidly.
What the hell is
wrong
with this town?

She could
kind
of see the kids giving up on trying to get anything to come here, but the adults, who
should
have been able to change things, seemed stuck in a case of permanent apathy. Even Tim didn’t bother to care much about anything outside of his store. No, that wasn’t quite right; he wasn’t the same as the rest of the adults in town. There was a different reason for him being the way he was; Staci just couldn’t put her finger on it.

Well, look at tonight. You would think that the owner of a local bar would be upset about losing his customers to a sports bar in the next town! And you would think he’d do something to get satellite in, even you couldn’t manage to get cable to work. It’s not as if they were unaware that these things existed, after all—people went out of town to shop, or they caught games at bars and restaurants. But…no. The answer, the few times she’d asked an adult—like the lone guy who ran a computer-repair place—why no one tried to figure out why Silence couldn’t support net or cell or cable, the answer was always “it can’t be done” or “it’s not worth the effort” and a shrug.

It was almost as if, once you left school, you got infected with some kind of zombie-apathy virus.

In disgust at seeing one more shopping post, she finally gave up on Facebook. She’d managed to send her dad a selfie today, when she’d gone up to Makeout Hill. She’d posed it very carefully, wearing the oldest and most faded of her thrift store finds. So there she was, no makeup, blond hair looking washed out in the overcast, a little thinner than she had been before (which she frankly thought was an improvement, and probably due to having to walk or bike everywhere), and looking more like an advertisement for helping street kids than the selfie on her Facebook page. She’d posed
that
one carefully too, wearing her best Juicy Couture outfit, makeup and jewelry that showed off her green eyes and good cheekbones, hair she had spent
hours
on. She’d told him she’d had to buy stuff to wear because she didn’t fit in and anyway, everything she had for summer was too light to wear given how cold it was here.

Okay, it was manipulative, but Brenda was manipulating him too, and anyway, it looked like the selfie had paid off. The latest email from Dad said he was sending her an L.L. Bean card. So at least she could get stuff that wouldn’t make her look like she was homeless.

If things weren’t exactly looking up, at least they weren’t quite sucking as much.

The sound of bottles clinking in the fridge made her decide she might as well take her lappie upstairs and watch a movie.
Not feeling like being Mom’s drinking buddy,
she reflected cynically. Although, at least last year, when Mom had taken her as a drunken confidant, she hadn’t also offered her beer.…

* * *

Friday found her early at the coffee bar, waiting for the others—who surprised her by coming in at five, rather than the seven she had expected. “Did you eat yet?” Wanda asked, as they all came in. She shook her head, expecting the answer to result in them all going over in a bunch to the Burger Shack.

“Good, then you might as well come along with us,” replied Seth. “Second Friday of the month.”

“Yeah, it is, what’s that got to do with anything?” she asked, standing up, and slinging her purse over her shoulder.

“First Methodist does a BBQ for
teeeeeeeenz,”
Wanda answered, drawing the word out sarcastically. “That means our folks don’t bother feeding us. Fourth Friday is a movie night with hot dogs. Which means our folks don’t bother feeding us.”

After a moment of thought, Staci identified “First Methodist” as the “okay church that sometimes puts stuff on for kids,” that Beth had told her about. “Okay,” she replied, following them out the door. Free food was free food. It couldn’t be worse than the Burger Shack.

As usual, the others were on foot, so she walked her bike along with them. The church in question was higher up on the slope that Silence was built on, and she was actually glad she wasn’t going to have to peddle her bike up it. The road they were taking was almost as steep a grade as the one up Makeout Hill.

When they got to the church—which at first glance looked like something on a New England postcard, all white and complete with steeple, and only at second glance did you notice that the new paint had been slapped over the old without anyone scraping or priming the bad parts—the BBQ was already as close to “going strong” as anything she’d yet seen in Silence. There were six adults presiding over six old kettle grills, three giant aluminum tubs full of ice and sodas, and a table with a red and white checkered tablecloth holding paper plates, condiments and bags of chips. Someone’s radio with blown-out speakers was tuned to Silence’s only station, and there were twenty or thirty kids ranging in age from nine to late teens milling around with food.

Looks like the gang’s ’rents aren’t the only ones that don’t bother feeding their kids.
This was the biggest number of people she had seen in one place, ever, in Silence. Even with the conversations and the music from the radio, the gathering seemed a little too quiet for that many people. Her group wove its way through the crowd until they had reached the tables with the food on them.

“Kind of dead, isn’t it?” Staci noticed that most people were keeping to themselves; the only conversations that were happening were in small clusters of people. Everyone that she made eye contact with looked away shortly after, as if they were purposefully ignoring her.

“Are you kidding? This is a regular jumping time in good ol’ Silence.” Jake had piled three hot dogs on his plate, and was reaching for a fourth. “Almost better than watching grass grow.”

It didn’t take long for her group to make their way through the food line and pick a corner in some shade from the setting sun. They were probably the loudest group there, and constantly got looks from the adults and some of the other kids. And it wasn’t as if they were being
seriously
loud.
They were just talking normally.

As the sun went down, somebody turned on the exterior lights. There were a couple floods on the back of the church, and strings of old Christmas lights and the sort of bare-bulb things you used to see at used car lots before people realized having four big floodlights cost less to run than strings of bare bulbs.
I didn’t know you could still get plain light bulbs…
Then again, this was Silence.
All 1950s, all the time.
Except for the music which seemed to be stuck on “All Eagles, all the time.”

Staci ate mostly in silence, piping up for certain parts of the conversation that the others were having. By and large, she just listened.

“I don’t care; Boba Fett is seriously underwhelming.”

“Now that’s a bunch of crap! He’s an interstellar
bounty hunter.
He’s got weapons on every inch of his person, and a badass ship. He’s able to get the drop on Han Solo, for crying out loud!”

“Actually, that was Vader—”

“Whatever. Point is, I hope we see more of him.”

“He got knocked into the gut of a giant monster. By a blind guy.
With a stick.
The most you’ll be seeing of him is a pile of throwup with a dinged helmet in the middle of it.”

“Hey, read the Expanded Universe, Jake! You know I got the books. Rule of Cool, man.”

Staci was having a hard time keeping up with the flow of the conversation, but she was getting better than she had been when she first joined the group. At least she actually knew what
Star Wars
was. Wanda waited until the other three were fully involved in science fiction minutiae before she scooted over to where Staci was sitting.

“So, want the dope on the rest of the peeps here?” Wanda asked, in a conspiratorial whisper.

“Sure,” Staci whispered back, looking at her burger. It was better than the Burger Shack, even if it was a little burned.

“Okay, the adults don’t really count, but they’re the minister, Reverend Franklin, his wife Eloise, Fred and Thelma Krause, and Joe and Evelyn White. They’re all okay. Now, the six kids closest to us are the skaters. Ken and Stan Jennis, Larry Green, Jerry Krause and Tom Pendergras. You never see one of them alone, it’s like they are joined at the hip or something. The jocks and their gfs, who are the Cheerleading Squad, are just past them, and there’s no point in telling you who they are because you will
never
be invited into their exalted company.”

Staci giggled a little at that. “So the skaters are okay with us and—”

“And to the Loyal and Exalted Society of Jocks and Jockettes, we do not exist.” Wanda rolled her eyes. “You should remember I told you that our football and basketball teams have never won anything in the history of ever, right?”

“Yeah. Not sure what they have to be stuck-up about,” Staci agreed.

“Me either. The minute they graduate, they’re gonna go straight to work, and you know what the options are around here. Not that too many people from Silence ever go to college, but it’s a cinch the jocks
never
do. This is the best they’ll ever get. Gotta hang on to what little glory they can, I guess.” Wanda sighed. “Seems pretty pathetic to me, but they’re Neanderthals, so, uggah-wuggah, me strong, me alpha male.”

“So…the guys with the white T-shirts—let me guess, they’re the science nerds?” Staci hazarded.

“Yes, and two of them are girls. Mary Krause, Bill Schoeder, Bob Flint, Kyle Peterson, Maureen Silk. They’re cool. The only reason they aren’t over here with us is because they’d have to cross alpha-male territory to get here.” Wanda finished off by pointing out a few of the kids who were eating alone, one with her nose stuck in a book, a harried kid who was trying to keep his hyperactive brother from jumping off the steeple or imploding, and about twenty kids who were “from the bad part of town, if you can imagine that we have one” who were keeping to themselves, and a half a dozen kids too young for high school. “There’s a lot of kids that don’t come here, or only come here once in a while, because they’re on night shift at a job, or they’re too tired after being on the fishing boats all day,” Wanda concluded. “Probably about two thirds of the kids going to high school have summer jobs. We’re
desperate
to get car and gas money, as you can imagine.”

“Yeah,” Staci agreed.

“Then there’s the Goths. Over there. In the shadows. Being mysterious. Sue ‘Valentina’ Griffin, Eric ‘Vlad’ White, Brittany ‘Bella’ Hailey, Rob ‘Blade’ Ketcham, and Kelsey ‘I’m-a-mega-bitch-and-play-with-dead-things-because-it’s-creepy’ Johnson. I used to hang out with them, but then they started to get
way
too dark and mopey. Even for me, which is saying something. Jake, Riley, and Seth are a better fit, anyways.”

“I was never into wearing uniforms,” Staci replied, eyeing their all-black outfits, dyed black hair, identical black nail polish and black eyeliner.

Wanda nearly choked on her bite of hot dog.

That got the attention of the
Star Wars
geeks. “What?” asked Seth.

“Uniforms—” Wanda managed to get out, nodding at the Goth clique. Seth looked at her puzzled for a moment; Riley got it first, and smothered a fit of giggles behind both hands.

“Really,” Jake said, when the light dawned for him. “And there is, seriously, only so much Morrissey and Nine Inch Nails you can listen to, am I right?”

And that was when the atmosphere changed, completely.

There was a…sound. Once you’ve heard the engine noise of a really expensive, really high-powered sports car, you never mistake that
sound
for anything else. The steel canyons of New York were good for that; Staci had heard, and consequently seen, a lot of high dollar cars. That was what Staci heard now, pulling up in the front of the church and stopping, and so did everyone else. All the conversations stopped dead. All heads turned; it was…weird. Even for Silence. Staci had never been in a situation where literally
everyone
stopped doing
everything
and waited for the appearance of—

He came around the corner of the church, and somehow, every bit of light seemed to be pulled towards him, as if he was creating his own spotlight. He paused for a moment, and cast his eyes over the crowd, giving the crowd more than enough time to take him in.

He looked to be in his late teens, he was blond and if you could be ruggedly handsome and angelic at the same time, he certainly fit both descriptions. Staci, as a New Yorker, knew how to pick out the subtle details that told you that someone’s clothing was
expensive,
and his certainly was. It might just be a light gray leather jacket, a black T-shirt, and a pair of jeans and boots, but the way it fit him, it all
had
to be tailored.

“That,” Wanda said, quietly enough that she didn’t break the silence, “is Sean Blackthorne, youngest of the Blackthornes, gracing us with his Presence.”

Sean’s eyes—a striking emerald green—passed over the crowd. He nodded to the jocks, waved a little to one of the adults, and then, locked gazes with Staci.