Twisted Fate (22 page)

I
was meditating in my backyard. A lot had happened that week, and I was trying to practice having a blank mind so later I could use my powers of concentration to get some work done. Tate and I had been skipping school a lot before all that stuff with Brian happened, and I realized once things had settled down that I was probably not going to be valedictorian. She was. Which was fine and all, but I thought maybe we could get our GPAs so that they were identical. Maybe it could be both of us. Anyway. I was out there relaxing by the fishpond, sitting on a stone slab and trying to naturally expand my consciousness, and when I opened my eyes, Graham Copeland was standing right in front of me with a camera.

I blinked a few times to make sure he wasn’t an apparition of some kind. Then I laughed and said, “What’s up, G?”

He said, “I’m just out roaming the neighborhood.”

“Dude,” I said. “How are things going? How does it feel to be a hero?”

“Good,” he said. “It feels good to be a hero. I think it’s good publicity for my career as a filmmaker.”

“Well, there you go,” I said. “Hey, can you turn that camera off? We’re just having a conversation. I don’t think it needs to be documented.”

“Oh,” he said, looking startled. “Yeah, sure.” He turned it off and slid it into his pocket.

“So, how are things?” I asked again. He looked a little weird, and I wanted him to relax.

“I was wondering about Tate,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“Are you in love with her?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Is she your girlfriend?”

“Are you asking if I own Tate?”

“No, it’s just when you guys came over the other night, she seemed so caught up in everything about you and impressed with you.”

“Huh. I dunno, man. Tate gets caught up in a lot of things.”

He nodded. “How long have you guys been together?”

“Been friends?” I asked. “Since elementary school.”

“What about Becky?”

“What about her?”

“Are you the same kind of friend with Becky?”

“No. Dude, are you interested in dating
Tate
?”

“I . . . yeah, well, we . . .”

“Look, man, I don’t care what extracurricular things Tate might do. She’s her own person, got it? And you’re my friend. Okay? Everything is cool.”

He looked really embarrassed. “Okay, but don’t you think she’s . . . I mean, that family is kinda . . .”

“Interesting? Very. That’s why I’m not about to get all freaked-out by teen romance nonsense. Okay? Tate and I are going to go to college together. We have some plans. I know you have your own plans, and that’s cool. We all have our own plans. We’re all alone when you get right down to it, right?”

“Yeah.”

“C’mon, dude, let’s go inside, I want to show you this website that’s all about fractals.”

I got up and stretched and we walked toward the house. It was okay spending time with him. He was still Art Dullard, but he was kind of okay. And I knew that Tate loved me and that we were getting the hell out of Rockland and that someday we’d talk about knowing Graham Copeland, someday he’d probably be famous. You could kinda see it just by looking at him.

I
t had been a week since I’d been called down to the office and it felt kinda weird. Up until now there was only one day when I was almost not called down to the office. Fitzgerald did the announcements and then some dipshit Richards-wannabe got on and started calling names. It’s generally the usual suspects, with a few kids who you’ve never heard of thrown in. That day they got through the whole list without saying the word
Tate
. Everyone in homeroom looked at me and then Trombley, my homeroom teacher, came over and patted me on the back and everyone clapped. About a minute later Fitzgerald got on the speaker and said, almost like he got how funny it was: “And last but not least, Ms. Tate.”

But that was last year. School had only just started a month ago and for the first few weeks I’d had uninterrupted call-downs. You know how they go. “Don’t skate in the hall.
Did you call Letorno a fat ass? Smoking on school grounds? Who did that graffiti out by the north entrance? Mr. Blah blah blah says you’ve got an attitude whatever.” But lately I guess they stopped watching every little thing I did, because the days went by and I didn’t have to visit with Richards or Mr. Fitz.

Anyway, this might sound weird but I missed seeing Richards, so I took myself to the office. She was wearing a pair of thick black-framed glasses and a black blouse with polka dots and a wide silver bracelet and her hair was up on her head in a bun with a pencil poked through it.

She smiled when I walked in. “What’s up, homegirl?”

“Just checking on you,” I said.

I’d been away from the office so long the jar of black licorice was gone and she actually had some candy that looked good on her desk—some kind of square gummy stuff covered with sugar. She held out the dish and offered me one and I popped it in my mouth.

Big mistake. “Oh my God, what is
wrong
with you?!” I said, wincing, and spit it into my hand. My whole mouth was burning. “What is that flavor? Cleaning solvent?”

She laughed and took two of the gross torture candies and started chewing them. “It’s crystallized ginger,” she said.

“Are you sure you’re supposed to
eat
it?”

She nodded and ate another one.

“Why can’t you just have a jar of M&M’s on your desk like a normal authority figure?”

“’Cause that stuff’ll kill you,” she said. “Sit down. What’s new? I haven’t seen you in weeks.”

A lot was new of course. She had to know from reading the papers what had happened with Brian and Graham.

“My next-door neighbor is a hero, I guess.”

She nodded, still chewing on the ginger. “That’s what I’ve been hearing. Did you know he had taken those movies of Brian Phillips?”

I nodded and suddenly felt weird. Realized that maybe this was why I had come down to the office. I guess I wanted to talk about it.

She looked at me for what seemed like a really long time. Then she got up and shut her door.

“What’s up?” she said when she sat back down.

“I think it’s kinda effed-up,” I said.

Richards nodded. “Me too.”

“He wasn’t going to tell the police about it at all, but we all convinced him to do it. If four other people hadn’t been nagging him, he never would have gone to the police in the first place. And he was scared to do it.”

“Why was he scared?”

“That’s just it, I don’t know. And I don’t know why we saved his ass instead of telling them we thought something weird was going on. He’s made a lot of films of people.”

“Has he made one of you?” she asked.

“Not me,” I said. “Unless he’s done it without me knowing.”

I swallowed hard and continued. “And now this hero stuff. I mean, it’s so frustrating. Maybe he’s a hero somehow, but I guess I just don’t know if what I’m thinking is right or if I’ve made him some kind of monster in my head. Nobody wants to believe someone like him would do anything bad intentionally.”

“What do you really think?”

“I think he’s a creep. No one else does, but I do, I think there’s something weird there. But every time I talk to him he’s nicer and cooler to me and I guess we’re becoming friends. God, I don’t know what to do.”

She said, “You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, Tate. And I think you do know what to do. The main thing is you need to protect yourself. If you think he’s made any movies of you or anyone else, you should go to the police.”

I nodded. “I’ll think about it,” I said. “Hey, can you write me a pass? I’m going to be late for chemistry after all this gabbing.”

She got out her pink pad and wrote me an excuse. “Don’t be a stranger,” she said, “and don’t start getting in trouble just to come hang out here. You don’t have to do that. You can come talk to me any time you want.”

“I know,” I said. Then I took a few of those gross ginger candies so I could give them to the kid I got stuck with for a lab partner. I’d tell him they were apple-flavored.

M
y family was so happy when Brian Phillips was found. We all were, the whole town. So relieved. My parents gave his mom a raise and started paying for her family’s health insurance. I didn’t know they had no health insurance, but as my mom said, they would sure need it now.

Brian had to stay in the hospital for a couple days, and then my mom said he was going to need a lot of counseling, but he would be okay. We went to visit him. I brought him a Wolverine action figure. I knew he already had one, but I figured another couldn’t hurt.

“I don’t really have superpowers,” he said when I saw him. We were in his parents’ backyard on a narrow little street down by the harbor.

“Me neither,” I said.

“What did you think yours were?” he asked.

“I thought my superpowers were that I could tell what
everyone was like by looking at them,” I said.

“I thought that too!” Brian said. “And also that I had metal bones and could fight.”

“I have real powers, though,” I told him.

“What are they?”

“I can hack into computers—I’ll show you sometime. What are your real powers?”

“I’m more patient than anyone on earth,” he said. “And I can remember everything.”

“That means that you actually will have superpowers one day,” I told him.

“Really?”

“Pretty much,” I said. “Come here, bud.” I gave him a big hug. “You have a good memory, but you’re forgetting some of your other real powers.”

“What are they?”

“You’re brave. You’re one of the bravest kids I know. You’re smart. You’re friendly. You’re good. You’re a very, very good little boy. Those are all real powers.”

He jumped a couple of times after I said it and took the Wolverine action figure and threw him and caught him.

I looked up and saw my mom and his mom standing in the window, looking out at us and smiling. And I knew then that we were all friends and that these people were not just people who worked for my family. I was proud of my mom. And for the first time since I was maybe Brian’s age, I thought I wanted to be just like her when I grew up.

T
here were no other cars in the driveway, and I’d watched him and his stepmom Kim leave about twenty minutes before, carrying her Hermès bag, wearing her Prada boots but still dressed in that weird way she had. Loose jeans covered with paint, her hair tied up in a knot at the back of her head and falling in her face. She looked like she didn’t care what anyone thought of her ever. They drove somewhere every Tuesday at four and they were always gone for about two hours—sometimes three.