Veneer (42 page)

“Mind your fucking business!” yelled Ruiz.

Russo turned and saw he was looking off-screen again. “Is every day like that?”

“I’m not saying it’s not a fun job, but it’s still a job. Be happy you get to go out and do stuff.” He lifted a palette from his desk. “You call me when Jalay has been dealt with. I’ll send a cleanup crew.” The warning finger came up again. “Don’t forget that part.”

“Yes, boss,” said Russo, cringing at the foul taste.

54 - Deron

“I changed my mind,” whispered Deron. “I don’t want you to come.”

He thought it would be harder, telling her he’d rather face his new life on his own, would rather make new friends and new loves without being tied down. Perhaps if Rosalia had been lying there when he woke up, naked and on her back with her face turned away, the words would have caught in his throat. But then, if she had been there, he wouldn’t have felt this way in the first place.

As much as it hurt to admit, Deron knew he had presented Rosalia with an impossible choice. She could continue to live in a world where her talents made her special or she could follow her boyfriend into the past where people would be able to see her true appearance, where dreams would remain locked in her head as a nontransferable artifact. It made more sense when he thought of the roles reversed, if she had lost her sight and Deron had been forced to choose. He wondered if he would have been as dauntless as he imagined himself to be. A day ago, he would have guessed yes, since that was what he imagined Rosalia would do for him. But now that the truth had come out, it was hard not to see himself as equally cowardly.

It was quiet in his dad’s bedroom; only the light rain beating against the window was audible over his own lethargic breathing. Nature had formed its own veneer on the clear glass, using the streaking water to bend the world beyond it. He thought of the city where he had been born and raised. And someday, eventually die there too. Deron nearly had at the hands of a boy whose face he couldn’t forget. Russo had evolved into a monster lingering in the shadows. It was in that general direction that he funneled his anger.

Everything ended with Rosalia’s decision, but it all went back to Russo.

It was in kindergarten that Deron first met Russo. A couple of weeks into the school year, Ms. Walker had given the class their first reconciliation lesson. They had to sit in a circle on the activity rug while she handed out active toys.

“Change the color,” she had told them. “When you finish, you can have free time.”

Deron tried to remember the theoretical lessons from earlier in the week, the demonstrations that Ms. Walker had put on showing them how easy it was to change anything just by touching it. Gripping the ball with both hands, he imagined the active toy as blue, but nothing happened. One by one, the other children in the circle got up, showed their reconciled toy to the teacher, and went to the back of the classroom to play. As the only student remaining on the activity rug, Deron tried to concentrate, but all he could hear was the laughter and chatter of his classmates.

Frustrated and on the verge of tears, Deron began to squeeze the ball as hard as he could. Only when his fingers began to throb did the color start to change, a slow bleed of blue from his fingertips. Excited, he stood to show Ms. Walker, but when he turned around, there stood Russo. Without a word, he reached out and touched Deron’s ball, pushing back the color until it was gray again. Then he smiled and was gone, leaving Deron with an unfinished project and an approaching teacher with a concerned look on her face. He told her what Russo had done and to his credit, he never turned another object of Deron’s gray. Instead, he turned them all red.

If someone had told him then that Russo would one day be responsible for ruining his life, he probably would have believed them. Even at that age, there was something wrong about him, some chaotic force that needed a wide berth.

Deron lingered face-down on the bed, letting the betrayal fill him up.

“Your hand was forced,” he told her. “My hand was forced.”

Rolling onto his back, he stared at the ceiling and imagined Russo’s face. His enemy needed a face because without it, there would be nothing to smash, nothing to spit in, nothing to absorb his anger. “Come on, you son of a bitch,” he said. He cursed Russo’s name, thought about every injustice the boy had ever done him. The hateful meditation produced Russo’s veneer on the pocked ceiling, spanning the entire surface from wall to wall. Deron flinched, tried to erase the unwanted apparition, but the image lingered.

“Fuck you!” he shouted, sitting up in the bed. Rubbing his eyes didn’t help; the face stuck fast. Deron tried to imagine everything as black, tried to see that empty place he fled to when he wanted to be alone. Around him, the walls, the furniture, and even the window with its beaded raindrops, bent to his will. All that remained was the looming face that stared down with contempt.

Deron tried to move away, but in the dark he missed the edge of the bed and tumbled to the floor. He closed his eyes, but it was as if he had reconciled Russo’s face on the backs of his eyelids. The prospect of staring at those eyes for the rest of his life made his stomach heave.

Standing on trembling legs, he groped around the room, no longer content to hide in his dark place. He raised his eyes to Russo and yelled, “Is this what you want?”

The room exploded in a red hue, drenching the walls in swirling blood. Everything else stayed the same, giving the room a two-tone feel that reminded him of old graphic novels. Stumbling away from the face, Deron found the living room similarly reconciled. It all seemed unreal; no one he knew could reconcile without physically touching an object. It was insane to think that he, a boy who had struggled with reconciliation all his life, would be the first one to develop such a power.

Without any encouragement, the red walls softened to an innocuous pink. Under the rosy coating, Deron could see the outlines of the previous portals, which he brought out one by one, restoring their original contents. His breathing returned to normal in time with the return of reality. Not only did his anger fade, but actual excitement crept into the void it had left. He was really doing it, really changing the veneers again. And he could see them! On the wall across from the couch, he noticed a large rectangular portal. Bringing it out, he tried to activate it, wanted to see some television program—any would do.

But the screen remained blank.

Then, as if someone had pulled the plug, the color began to drain out of every surface. Once again, the veneer blinked out of existence. Deron stood between the kitchen and the living room, waiting for some kind of answer. Finding none, he walked back to the bedroom and found that Russo’s face was gone. It was a small consolation.

Deron crossed the room to the window and let his head bang against the cold glass. A sigh caused it to fog up, but when it faded, he saw the city revealed again in the now familiar gray.

“Fuck Easton,” he muttered, giving the glass another taste of his forehead. He eyed the common area outside the apartment with its damp sidewalk that led to a gate. The street was mostly empty and across it was the strip mall with its fogged up windows. There was nothing out there, nothing and no one.

Deron smiled. He felt sorry for himself, but at least he wasn’t shouldering the blame. The person responsible was out there in the rain, probably doing something terrible to someone who didn’t deserve it. He thought of what he’d do if he ever saw Russo again. Clenching his fists, he tried to summon the rage, but all he got was frustration and anxiety. Still, a strange sensation accompanied it, the same he had felt just minutes before. Uncertainly, he reached out with his mind and tried to turn the black iron of the fence to a garish yellow. When it shimmered gold, he grunted.

“No fucking way.”

Embracing the feeling, Deron reconciled more colors onto the outside world. He changed the street and the sidewalk and the wet grass. Everything in sight began cycling through a myriad of colors until finally he rested and admired the mess he had created on a single street. It was impressive by itself, but to extend it to the rest of the city would be epic. Just as he was getting giddy about the possibilities, he noticed something out of the corner of his eye.

Parked on the other side of the street was a now multicolored sedan, except that the veneer wasn’t holding. Confused, Deron sent out a reinforcing command, turning the car into a hunk of beige that vaguely resembled a peanut. A moment later, the color faded, changed to an ominous black. Looking around, he saw that nothing else was returning to its original state, so then why this one thing?

And then he saw him and realized that it wasn’t his own power that was failing, it was just that someone else’s was better. The man that got out of the car was dressed in a conspicuous black trench, just like the agent that had questioned him before he went to Paramel. Whether it was the same one, he couldn’t tell.

The agent walked to the front of his car and surveyed the virtual damage. From a distance, it looked like he was laughing. Deron almost joined in, happy that someone appreciated what he had accomplished, but then the agent looked directly at him, through the rain and the trees and the glass. In that instant, the man felt too close and Deron backed away.

After gathering his courage, he ventured a quick peek and swallowed hard. The agent was approaching the gate, his eyes glued to the window.

55 - Jalay

The Holly Street Hilton parking garage got less crowded the higher Jalay climbed on the circular staircase. By level seven, the only occupants of the numerous reserved parking spaces were shallow puddles that splashed his pants as he scampered through them. Tired and out of breath, he darted behind the first evercrete column he could find, throwing his back against it while trying to convince his body that it could relax for a moment. He knew Russo was right behind him, knew that he had been leisurely following him since their little altercation a few minutes earlier.

Jalay looked around and shook his head. A deserted parking garage was a terrible place to hide.

Before he could feel too bad about his decision, a sharp pain erupted in his left leg—his out of shape muscles were complaining about the amount of work. Thinking himself shot or stabbed, Jalay let his legs buckle and then slid to the ground, landing in a puddle that soaked through his jeans. He grimaced against the pain, pressed his fingers into the muscle to relax it. Remorse took hold, a feeling that maybe he should have participated more in P.E. or at least exercised a little on his own.

The unused adrenaline continued its feedback loop and with each pass it strengthened a tight knot in his back. He arched against it, but the throbbing consumed his entire spine. Even without being there, Russo was inflicting pain on him by making him run, by breaking down his body before the actual fight. With that realization, Jalay decided that he could not keep running from his enemy.

He had to finish it.

“You know what that means, right?” asked a voice inside him that sounded a lot like Jordan.

He nodded in response. It meant pain.

“He is bigger than you, stronger too.” Jordan sounded worried, not an easy feat for an artificially intelligent hallucination.

“I’m aware,” he replied, through his teeth. Jalay had watched Russo bully people for years. The guy had torment down to a science.

“Even if you beat him up, he’ll just come back harder and faster.”

It would never end, he agreed. Even without provocation, Russo had returned to finish what he had started at Jalay’s locker. How would he react to having his ass handed to him by his weaker and chubbier cohort?

“You have to kill him.”

Below, Jalay could hear the squeal of tires against the wet evercrete. Above, light thunder rumbled and shook loose the rain that was falling outside. He was stuck in the middle; nothing seemed real.

“Kill him,” urged Jordan.

“Okay,” said Jalay. Despite the protest in his leg, he turned and placed his hands on the column to brace himself. It would require all of his strength, every last ounce of survival instinct to get out of this.

“But what a story,” said Jordan, seductively. “Can’t you see it?”

Jalay’s eyes snapped open and he was surprised to find a new veneer on the evercrete. Only, instead of a scene of him killing Russo, there was just a blank portal, buzzing along the edges where the black flashed gold. The next few actions were automatic.

His start page unfolded from the right side of the screen and with a mental command he was able to bring up the phone icon and a contact list of people who never called him. Wiping their names away, he expanded the number pad into full screen and actually used his finger to stub out the numbers. Nine, one, one.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to Jordan. “I can’t beat him.” It was a lovely idea, getting the best of Russo, but it wouldn’t work. He needed help, preferably from someone with a gun.

“Easton Dispatch, what is your emergency?” asked a professionally veneered operator. She didn’t have a smile on her face but she wasn’t frowning either. The effect was soothing, as if her calm composure meant he could relax too.

“I have information about Russo Rivera,” he stammered.

“Ru—” said the woman, before disappearing suddenly.

Jalay blinked in confusion.

The portal buzzed and sprang back to life, but this time a familiar face was staring back at him.

“Mr. Chapman,” said Agent Ruiz. He was in an office, seated behind a large desk. Behind him was the Easton skyline, but completely dry and sunny. “It’s a pleasure to see you again.”

“I,” said Jalay, unsure of how to continue. “Russo’s after me.”

“So
now
you know where he is?”

Was he really being that petty? “Yes! He’s here and I think he’s going to kill me.”

“Oh, now I don’t think he would do that.”

“He almost killed Deron Bishop!”

The agent shrugged. “I’m not really interested in—”