XGeneration 1: You Don't Know Me (30 page)

When he was done, Scott wiped his lap of stray bits of tape and pushed his glasses back on. He had enough time to flinch before her fist met his shoulder. The punch was solid but not hard.

“That’s for holding out on me, mister.”

She looked at him another moment, head tilting to one side as if seeing him in a new light. Then she walked her swing backward and kicked out her legs. She swept past Scott and jackknifed her knees. The chains clicked and creaked as her pendulum reversed. Not knowing what else to do, Scott joined her. He modulated the kicks and pulls of his own legs until he and Janis were side by side, taking off and swooping back, the sweet scent of the playground’s mulch streaming between them. Scott hardly noticed the biting soreness across his bottom.

When Janis spoke, her voice sounded close. “So where do you think they come from?”

“Our powers? Well, we haven’t been subjected to high doses of any of the standard radiations—gamma, cosmic, that sort of thing—so we can eliminate the radiation cause. And neither of us are gods or demigods, so far as we know. Or from other planets. Or bearers of magical jewelry.”

Scott cringed.
Like she’s going to get any of those comic book references, you monumental dumbass.

“Could be something in our DNA,” he said carefully. “A genetic anomaly, maybe?”

Their legs flexed and extended in time.

“You know…” Janis said. “There
is
this thing my sister does. I used to think it was part of her my-way-or-the-highway resolve. But it’s more than that. She goes inside your head somehow.”

“Like mind control?”

“Sort of. But it’s more like she weakens your thoughts, makes it so you can’t impose your will. Not against hers, anyway. I don’t even think she knows she does it. So maybe there’s something to your DNA theory. Do your parents have any… I don’t know, special abilities?”

Scott snorted at the idea. “Other than my dad eating an entire pizza in his sleep once?” He shook his head. “How about yours?”

“No. Not that I know of. Too bad you don’t have a brother or sister to test the idea.”

Scott watched the tops of his shoes appear and disappear, the woods down the hill rising into view, a sweep of black, and then falling away. Inside those same woods was the clearing Scott had fled to the summer before, Jesse, Creed, and Tyler in pursuit. The clearing where he had heard the radius and ulna bones of his right arm snap above Creed’s giddy laughter.

Scott slammed down his heels, plowing two furrows into the mulch and nearly toppling forward.

“What is it?” Janis stopped kicking and let the ground catch her feet, rocking to a more elegant stop beside him.

“Creed and Tyler. You know, the Bast brothers?”

Janis’s lips drew into a scowl. “Creed was the only boy to make me cry. Sucker punched me in the stomach when I was nine.”

“Yeah well, there’s something they do, too.” Scott’s words were already tumbling over one another. “Creed possesses some sort of super speed. One second, he’s twenty yards away, and the next he’s at your side.”
Holding a blade to your throat.
“And Tyler, his power has something to do with electricity. I’m not sure how it works, exactly, but he shocked the bejeezus out of me at the tennis courts back in September. I think he ran a current through the fence when I was trying to climb over. Jesse got a dose, too. Burned like heck the next morning.”

“What were you doing in the tennis courts with those creeps?”

Heat bloomed over Scott’s ears. “I, ah…”
THAT’S OUR TEAM! GO, TEAM, GO!
“It’s sort of a long story.”

“So there’s Creed and Tyler. Do you know of anyone else?”

Scott thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Jesse Hoag, but he’s always been a freak of nature. Used to rip textbooks in half in elementary school, do you remember that? He got hold of one of mine once, one of those thick readers.”

“Strange,” Janis said quietly. She toed the ground with one of her blue flats. “You, me, my sister, the Bast brothers, Jesse. And even if we have to put an asterisk by Jesse’s name, it doesn’t change the fact that we all live in the same neighborhood.” Her eyes narrowed. “Think about it, Scott. Of all the people we’ve known in our lives, our entire lives, the only ones with unique abil—all right,
powers
—live right here, in Oakwood.”

He kept staring at her. How hadn’t he seen that? His mind picked up the slack.

“So now it becomes a chicken-or-the-egg question,” he said. “Which came first: our powers or moving to Oakwood?”

“What, do you think there’s something in the water…?”

But Janis was peering past him now. When Scott turned, he saw it too: a pale halo against the giant oak tree, starting at the top half and swelling down and around it, becoming brighter. The drone of an approaching engine followed.

Janis stepped from the swing, and Scott stood beside her, his heart pounding the backside of his sternum. The car was coming up the hill, quickly. High beams shot through chinks in the tree’s leaf cover, penetrating their space. Scott instinctively moved in front of her, just as he had done that day in the woods.

When the car entered The Grove, Scott sized up the headlights. He exhaled. “It’s all right.” He recognized the car’s sound too. “It’s your sister.”

He followed Janis through the tall grass and threads of night mist to the curb, the car’s golden light growing over them.

“Offer you a ride?” she asked.

Scott shook his head. “No, thanks. I’ll just walk home.”

“Hey, um, everything you told me… I believe you.”

Scott looked at her face, in full illumination now, and remembered the morning at the end of the summer when a square of sunlight had caught her perfection. He remembered how much it had hurt to look at.

“I believe you, too,” he said.

The Prelude swerved up to the curb. The passenger side door flew open. Margaret leaned across the seat, glaring out at them. “Janis Graystone! You get into the car right this instant! Do you know it’s almost midnight?”

Janis gave Scott a tired smile. “See you tomorrow?”

“Right. See you tomorrow.”

“Sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah.” He found it hard to meet her eyes now. “And thanks for… for what you did earlier.”

Janis climbed in and pulled the door closed. The last thing Scott heard before the car wheeled around, its tires cutting sharply against the asphalt, was Margaret’s harping voice: “You
assaulted
two of their members and tried to attack one of your own sisters?”

Scott pushed his hands into his pockets and set out for home. He could feel the late hour in his spent body and see it in the dark windows he ambled past. The entire street was sleeping save for a lone figure farther down the hill, walking his dog. Above the soft clopping of his own shoes, Scott could make out the distant tinkling of the dog’s collar. But Scott wasn’t thinking about that right now. He was thinking about the fading hum of the Prelude, only minutes old, and how, for the first time, it hadn’t sounded like a missed opportunity.

Not tonight.

25

Scott wasn’t surprised when Grant Sidwell appeared in his first period biology class the next morning and asked the teacher permission to speak with him. He’d steeled himself for the eventuality. But when he found Britt waiting in the hallway as well, a part of his gut quivered like gelatin. But Britt looked nothing like the zealous priest from the night before. His stocky shoulders were rounded, his eyes downcast, and his hair dry. In his lemon-yellow Polo, he looked like just another high school student.

“Listen, Scott,” Grant said. “We, ah, we’ve come to apologize for last night. Things definitely got out of control.”

“Yeah, man. Sorry.” Britt barely raised his head.

“And we want to make it up to you.” Grant placed his hand where Scott’s shoulder met his neck and squeezed him companionably. Scott held himself rigid. “Forget last night happened, all right? You’re in, man. As of right now, you’re a Gamma brother. We’re even going to waive your dues this year.”

“Yeah,” Britt put in.

Keep your mouth shut, and we’ll take care of you.
That’s what Grant was really telling him. Sometime following the party, probably while he and Janis were talking up in The Grove, it was the solution Grant and the other officers had come up with.

“Thanks,” Scott said, “but I’m not really interested in Gamma anymore.”

“Did you hear me? You’re in. You’re a brother.” He squeezed his shoulder again until it almost hurt.

“I heard you.”

He could see the growing uncertainty in Grant’s expression. And for the first time, Grant seemed to notice that, though Scott was wearing slacks and a nice shirt, he wasn’t in Standards. No Gamma letter hung from his neck either. Grant’s hand dropped away. “Last night was an aberration, Scott. It’s not what Gamma’s about and will never happen again. I promise.”

Grant’s eyes seemed to be pressing his now, but Scott’s gaze didn’t waver, not once. He remembered that first meeting, in August, when they had all looked like magazine models. And that’s just what they were, Scott understood, two-dimensional models. It was Grant who finally averted his eyes. His gaze seemed to search around a moment before seizing on Britt.

“Britt here’s been put on probation,” he said.

Britt’s head whiplashed up, his eyes huge. A new development, Scott saw. Not something they’d discussed the night before.

Scott’s kind just want to get in
, Scott imagined Grant telling the others.
So we tell him he’s in. He’ll be ecstatic, trust me, probably fall prostrate at our feet.
Scott imagined the others nodding smugly.

Now Scott watched the Gamma president’s instinct for self-preservation in action, watched it veer off script, plowing down road signs, smudge pots, busting through sawhorse barricades. To hell with loyalty. Screw brotherhood.

“Now wait just a goddamned minute,” Britt muttered.

Grant shook his head as if to say
not now
, then turned back to Scott. “We’re willing to make this right, Scott. But we need you to tell us that you’re willing to forget last night ever happened.”

Hadn’t Britt said something similar in the midst of swinging his paddle?

I wanna help you, son. I really do. But you have to want it!

THWACK!

“I’m trying to spare us both a lot of embarrassment here.” Grant pushed out a chuckle.

Britt had stalked a small circle and now spoke through gritted teeth. “Can we talk for a second?”

Grant shook his head again.

“The deal is this…” Scott began.

Both of them stood watching him. Though his pulse raced, it was all Scott could do to keep from smiling. He counted slowly to five in his head.

“An Alpha pledge roughed up a couple of your members last night. You know who I’m talking about, right?” He waited for them to nod. “All right, then the deal is this. I’m willing to forget last night, but you have to forget last night, too. If I hear about her getting into any kind of trouble over what happened, I’m going straight to Principal Munshin. He’ll hear everything. He’ll understand there was a reason for what she did. You follow?”

Both of them nodded again.

“I didn’t hear you.”

“Yes,” they said.

“How about we seal the deal with…” Scott studied the ceiling in pretend thought, then snapped his fingers. “I know, did you happen to see
Revenge of the Nerds?
Do you remember how those nerds laughed?”

Grant and Britt looked at one another.

“Of course you did. Let’s hear it. Four of them.”

Grant grimaced. “I really don’t think that’s necessary.”

Scott started to turn away.

Britt’s first honk-laugh ripped down the hallway. He elbowed Grant in the side and shot him a look that said,
C’mon, man, this is getting off easy—no probation for me, you’re clear.
Grant sighed and joined Britt in the final three honks, though with far less enthusiasm.

“Not bad, gentlemen.” Scott clapped Grant’s shoulder. “For half a second there, you were almost half interesting.” He watched their eyes trying to compute that. “Well, I’ve got to get back to class.”

“Listen, if you ever want…” Grant started to say, but Scott didn’t hear the rest. The door had already swung closed behind him.

* * *

Janis peeked over at Blake, who was skipping his final lunch with the other Gamma pledges. Until that day, his pledge card had been perfect. He steered down Thirteenth Street in silence, past the university, to the Steak 'n Shake. It was about as far as you could go for lunch and still make it back in time for fifth period, depending on the wait. Janis wondered if he’d brought her out here to break up. She wondered, too, why the idea only made her feel vaguely numb.

“So, is everything all right?” Blake asked her after they had been seated at a small corner table and ordered.

“Yeah. Sorry about last night.” It came out sounding hollower than she meant it to.

“I’ve never seen you like that. You were really… upset.”

Upset? Her brain felt like it had been drenched in gasoline and set ablaze. But that part of the night seemed distant now, as if she had only stood behind that person, observing.

Janis watched their waitress twist back toward them, past tables of college students, businessmen in polyester, and telephone technicians with hard hats in their laps. She set their fountain drinks down, two vanilla Cokes. When Janis looked up, she found Blake’s hand over his chin and his brows drawn together as though he was trying to decide who she was.

“Look, Scott and I were good friends growing up.” She traced a line through the condensation beading over her glass. “I was taller than him back then, so I used to pretend I was his older sister. I looked out for him.” She shrugged. “I guess the instinct’s still there.”

Blake took a swallow of his drink and set his glass down. When he looked out the window, the light paled his face. He crunched a piece of ice between his teeth, then let out a long breath.

Here it comes,
Janis thought.
The “maybe we should be friends” speech.

“You were right, you know,” he said.