The Demon's Apprentice (7 page)

My heart sank as I stepped into the cafeteria and looked at the sea of people in front of me. The buzz of a hundred conversations washed over me like an invisible wave, and the energy of a room full of people pressed in on my mystic senses. The subtle pressure made me feel like my ears wanted to pop as I walked through the subtle ebb and flow of mystic currents toward an unoccupied table in the corner.

Suddenly, I felt very alone. The sense of isolation caught me off guard. Only three days back with people I loved, and I couldn't go for more than four hours away from them without getting lonely. I shook my head as I opened the insulated lunch sack Mom had given me that morning. I'd gone for years on my own; I could handle another few hours. When I pulled out the two sandwiches Mom had made, I smiled and felt a little of the loneliness vanish. Mom had made them with bread she'd baked on Sunday. She'd packed some chips, and a thick piece of baklava. It was like having a little piece of home there with me.

              I caught myself closing up the chips before I was finished, and forced myself to eat all of them. Mom wasn't going to let me go hungry, I reminded myself. I didn't need to stash food for later. Thoughts of stale pizza and flat soda surfaced for a moment, and I forced them into the big box in my head marked “The Past – Don't Open. Ever.” Besides, I told myself, the future was looking a lot brighter now; Mr. Chomsky's class was right after lunch, and I still had French and Wood Shop to look forward to.

I took my time with the baklava, and still had a few minutes to enjoy my soda. I'd forgotten how good cold, still-fizzy soda could taste until Saturday, and I decided I liked orange soda, but not as much as root beer. I crossed orange off my mental list. Clear citrus drinks were next, though I had no idea what the difference could be between any of them, I was looking forward to finding out.

              The taste of my soda was just starting to fade on my tongue when the bell rang. People started heading for the doors across the cafeteria from me. Crap. If just being in the same room with so many people pushed on my mystic senses, I didn't want to find out what getting caught up in the bottleneck a door would cause.

Two guys ducked past me, both a little chubby, both wearing t-shirts with slogans on them, both moving like they didn't want to be seen. They slipped out of a set of doors that were half-hidden by stacks of chairs, and I followed. It opened out into an almost-empty hallway next to the auditorium. It put me on the far side of the cafeteria from my locker, but I preferred having to hustle a little to the headache a mystic overload would cause.

I ducked into a narrow hallway that looked like it went where I needed to go, and hoped I wasn't getting myself lost. When I got close to the end, though, I heard Brad's voice, and saw a flash of purple and gold. More letter jackets gathered near the end of the hall, and I heard another voice. The hall came to a T a few yards in front of me, and people were passing between Brad's group and me, so I couldn't see the other guy.

“Brad, look, I'm gonna be late for class, man,” the unseen guy said.

“We wouldn't want that, would we?” Brad mocked. “This ain’t gonna take long.”

A door opened across the hallway, and Brad's buddies chuckled as they all followed him in. As tempting as it was to leave the guy to his fate, it wasn't tempting enough. I hit the intersection of the hallway at a jog and wove my way through the other students toward what I could see was a boys’ bathroom. The door hadn't quite closed, and I pushed it open just far enough to slip inside. The privacy wall hid me from view, and I slid along it until I was near the edge. I was out of direct sight, but I could see the end mirror on the line of sinks. In the reflection, I could see Brad's victim pinned against the stalls, a dark-haired kid wearing a denim trench coat that was covered in ink drawings.

“Look, Brad,” the kid was saying, “I told you I'm not going to say anything. No one would believe me!”

“Mr. Chomsky might,” Brad countered. “He likes you, Lucas, and he has it in for me. So if you run and tell him you saw me in his classroom during lunch, he might think I was up to something.”

“Dude, you were in his briefcase!” Lucas said.

“See, that's the kind of attitude that’ll get you in trouble. We need to fix that. We're gonna give you a taste of what'll happen if you open your big mouth. What did Coach call that again, Bryce?”

“Negative reinforcement,” one of the other jocks said.

“Guys, I promise, I won't say anything!” Lucas’ voice came out almost as a squeak.

“We just want to be sure, see,” one of the jocks said from Brad's left.

“If you tell anyone what you saw, you're gonna hurt a lot worse than this.” Brad drew his fist back and gut-punched Lucas. He went down to his hands and knees and retched. 

The rest of the jocks moved in on him and my heart sped up. Lucas gave a moan that sounded like a kid who'd been through this before, and I stepped around the corner. The part of my brain that had probably never evolved was screaming at me like a monkey to go the other way, but the seven-year-old kid in me could only see himself there on the floor. I slapped the hairy monkey part of my brain down and kept going. All I had was a desperate bluff that one of my marks had tried on me once.

“He doesn't have to say anything.” I looked down at my empty right hand and slipped it into my pocket. “All I have to do is hit the send button, and you guys are all over my home page.”

Eight jocks gave me slack-jawed looks, while Lucas just seemed relieved. It looked like they were buying my bluff. Their eyes kept moving back and forth between my face and my jacket pocket. All I had was the suggestion of a cell phone in my pocket and a credible-sounding threat. Hell, smoke and mirrors were more real than what I was trying to pull off.

“You. What do you want?” Brad asked.

“Let the skinny dude walk,” I said.

Lucas started to scramble to his feet, and Brad grabbed him by the back of his jacket. “Erase the video first,” he demanded.

“Don't try to negotiate with me, Duncan. You don't have the leverage here. I do. Cut him loose, or you're an instant Internet sensation.”

Brad tried to look unconcerned, but his friends were sweating. “Brad, the big dog would kill us if something like that got out,” one of them said softly. Brad let go of Lucas like his jacket had just caught on fire. He scrambled across the bathroom toward me and I heard him turn around behind me.

“Awright, he's cut loose,” Brad said. “Now erase the video, damn it.”

“Oh, I figure this is good at least till the end of football season. Call it a little negative reinforcement,” I said as I stepped back and slipped out the door. Lucas was right beside me as I headed for my locker. The halls were almost empty around us.

“Dude, that was awesome!” he crowed as he bounced beside me. “You ought to post it anyway. Brad will just try to kick your ass.”

“Leverage is only good 'til you use it,” I said. The fact that I didn't actually
have
any leverage didn't help. But as long as everyone believed it was real, the bluff would keep working.

“This is going to be the best year ever. Hey, I'm Lucas Kale.” He stuck a hand out.

“Chance Fortunato.” I felt the faint tingle of potential talent as I shook his hand. “You're gonna be late for class.”

He looked at his watch and cursed. “Dude, you're right. See you later?” He turned and jogged off, and I broke into a trot, too. I barely made it to Physical Science before the tardy bell rang. There was only one seat left, near the front of the lab, to the left of the teacher's desk. My heart started thumping in my chest at the too-familiar sight of a lab room. This one was a lot like the one at Truman High School where I'd spent the last four years. Except for the students. The difference was enough to help me get my feet going, and I slid into the open seat.

The girl next to me was dressed in a lot of black, with fingerless lace gloves, a fishnet top under a black t-shirt, and a lace-over-satin skirt. Her hair was a bright red bob with black streaks through it, and she wore thick, dark eyeliner and a nose ring. The rest of her face was as pale as cosmetics could make it, except for black lipstick.

Two guys sat across from us, both wearing t-shirts with superheroes on the front.

“You must be the new guy everyone's talking about,” the girl said cheerfully.

“New guy, I'll cop to. I didn't know anyone was talking about me, though. I'm Chance.”

“I'm Wanda. Yeah, word is Brad Duncan already hates you, good going there, and Strickland's doing his best to help the principal kick you out. Gina Morales' brother, Sammy, said you had a bunch of scars and some tattoos; were you in a gang or something?” she blurted in one breath.

I replayed the whole thing in my head to make sure I didn't miss anything before I answered.

“Okay, in order: nice to meet you; yes, he does, the feeling's mutual; it figures, the guy's a jerk; yes, I do; and no, I wasn't.” I waited for a moment while she sorted that all out.

“Wanda's like the CIA,” the guy on the left said with a smirk.

“Only with boobs,” the one on the right added. They both snickered as Wanda flipped them off.

“Any time, babe,” Left said.

There was a chorus of giggles behind us, and a square of colored paper landed on the lab table between us. Wanda and I both looked over our shoulders for the source. Two lab tables back, we saw a trio of blonde heads turned our way with a fashion magazine open on the desk in front of them.

“Try some, it'll cover the smell of bitch,” one of them said sweetly.

Wanda's face turned red, and she picked up the little perfume sample from the table. “I'll take bitch over skank any day, Leda,” she hissed and threw it back. Whatever Leda was about to say back was cut short as the door opened. The room went quiet for a second then the murmur of conversations started back up again as a familiar-looking redhead walked into the room.

“Speaking of skanks,” Wanda said, “all hail the Queen Skank. I heard you
really
pissed her off before first period. Shanté said she was crying all through Algebra. What did you say to her?”

“I called her…an accessory,” I said quietly. “Asked Brad if she matched his car.”

She turned her head to face me as she passed, and I could see fresh hurt in her eyes when they met mine. There was no way she could have heard me from halfway across the room, but she was acting like she had.

“Oh, wow!” Wanda gasped. “His truck is bright red, she totally matches it!” Was that all it was, I wondered? Brad's girlfriend made her way to the Blonde Table and was instantly surrounded by designer tops and perfect hair.

“All right, class, let's begin,” Mr. Chomsky's voice came from the front of the room. He was standing behind his desk with a blue ice chest in his hands.

“I hate it when he does that!” Right whispered, as Chomsky pulled the attendance book out of his desk.

I sat back to wait for him to call out names, and tried to think of a cool way to say, “Here.” However, Mr. Chomsky didn't seem to do anything the normal way. He looked out over the room, down at his roll sheet, then grabbed a pen.

“Here; here; here; absent; here; here; here; Brianna et al., here; here; Mr. Fortunato, barely here on time; and Miss Cooper, technically tardy. And, there's me, also technically tardy, so I can't hold it against you.” He set the attendance book down, then smiled before he spoke again. “Very well, class, let's get some learning done! First of all, we have a new student today, Mr. Fortunato. Make him feel welcome. Now, let's review briefly what we went over yesterday in chapter seven on thermal energy, then we'll be breaking out the Bunsen burners and playing with fire to demonstrate some of water's more interesting properties. Who remembers the boiling point of water?”

“Two hundred twelve degrees Fahrenheit, or one hundred degrees Celsius,” I said quickly.

“Excellent, Mister Fortunato. Next time, though, raise the hand, please. Now, can water in an open container get any hotter?” I started to raise my hand, but Chomsky pointed to one of the blondes behind me.

“Total no-brainer there!” she said. “Of course it can! My mom's stove goes up to like four hundred, and she puts it up to the highest setting when she boils water all the time.”

“Thank you, Miss Case. An interesting observation. Anyone disagree?”

My hand went up slowly, and I was the lone holdout against her opinion.

“All right, Mister Fortunato. Why?” he asked, as a few chuckles went around the room.

“Okay,” I started, “um, so, yeah, a stove goes higher than two-twelve, and yeah, her mom uses higher temperatures when she cooks, but that doesn't mean the water gets any hotter, it just means it boils faster. When water boils, it turns into steam, and that can get as hot as it wants.” I stopped for a moment to try to find the right way to describe what I'd seen hundreds of times while making potions and elixirs for the boss.

“Dork,” Leda said.

“Thank you, Miss Carson, for volunteering to defend Mister Fortunato's theory,” Chomsky said with a smile. “Now, stand up and explain to the class why he's right.”

“But…he's not, Mister Chomsky!” Leda said.

“Care to bet an A on that?” Chomsky said, as he carried the ice chest to the middle of the room.