Book of Dark #1: Always Stand Up

  ~~~

  The next day, Keane was a zombie.

  It was hardly surprising after two consecutive nights without sleep, but the dazed state was annoying nonetheless.

  He’d spent most of the day shuffling from one class to another, barely aware of his surroundings and frequently bumping into other students.

  Any mention of the library or reading at this stage would have earned the offender a death stare at a minimum.

  He stumbled out of his daydream to find himself in yet another class, somehow already sitting at his regular desk, unable to remember for the life of him how he’d gotten there. Seeing the students pouring in he assumed that class was about to begin and started to unpack his books from his favorite, and only, red and black backpack.

  Years ago, one of St. Martin’s donors, who worked in Quality Assurance for a sporting goods manufacturer, had received a shipment of backpacks which had been deemed unsellable due to ‘cosmetic defects’. The donor had been asked to dispose of what he thought was perfectly acceptable merchandise. In a moment of inspiration, he had decided that he would donate the consignment to St. Martin’s instead of adding to the quickly growing landfills around the country.

  That week, every kid at the orphanage had received the same black and red backpack, each with a toggle missing from one of the side pockets, each with a few threads loose. Keane remembered that week well. It had been a good week.

  But, over time, the minor defects had grown into larger rips and tears, making the bags unusable. After barely a year, most of the kids had disposed of theirs and moved on. Not Keane, though. He adored the backpack too much. It was just the perfect size. It had enough space for his books and things, but was still small enough to easily maneuver during quick getaways from boys who wanted to pummel him. He had decided that he would stitch the rips back together.

  Unsurprisingly, he’d been bad at the whole stitching thing at first, stabbing his fingers a number of times. The thought of parting with the bag had been too unbearable, though, so he stuck with it, and in time, his skills with the needle improved.

  Even though the backpack now looked like a tattered, badly patched mishmash of plastic and metal, to Keane it felt like an extension of his very self. It also made him feel hopeful; it reminded him that there were good people in the world, people who refused to dump junk into the earth just for cosmetic reasons, people who donated to orphans.

  Keane noticed, with rising alarm, that he hadn’t heard a peep from Brok since he’d found himself sitting at this desk. Then it struck him that he hadn’t actually heard from or even seen the boy since Geography with Mr. Hunt many, many hours ago.

  He looked up to check the classroom for his friend. Instead, he ended up almost falling off his chair with fright.

  Zara was in the seat next to him.

  “Hi!” she chirped.

  “Er, hi?” said Keane, rubbing his eyes, unsure whether this was the real Zara or just another one of his dreams. Was he even awake? He pinched himself to check. Then, he inhaled sharply and started to go red in the face because he’d pinched too hard.

  Zara smiled at his odd behavior as she started to unpack her bag. The overly neat way in which the bag’s contents were organized, and the scarily obsessive-compulsive way in which Zara was now lining things up on her desk made Keane frown. At least now he knew that he wasn’t dreaming; no one could dream of something this boring!

  The sudden buzz of whispers that started to circle the classroom made him look up.

  And when he saw that it was him and Zara who the students were pointing at as they laughed and muttered to each other, he quickly crossed his arms and sunk in his seat.

  “You’re setting a dangerous precedent, you know,” he muttered from the corner of his mouth, concerned that Zara didn’t quite understand what she was getting herself into by sitting next to him. After all, few students could identify her as the chubby girl with the dubious past, which meant she had a real chance at a fresh start here. And hanging out with him—the lowest rung in the school pecking order—was not the way to do that.

  “I’m doing what now?”

  “Surely, you’ve realized…” said Keane.

  Zara smile blankly. “No idea what you’re on about.”

  He sagged. He was going to have to spell this out for her.

  “Look, if you’re associated with me in this school, you will be picked on.” He gestured at all of the gossiping students around them. “And your window’s shrinking fast.”

  Zara glanced sideways from Keane to the students and back again while she considered this.

  “Nah,” she said, dismissively.

  “Fact!”

  “Not buying it.”

  “Zara! You see that boy there? That’s my friend Brok. He’s being picked on as we speak. Just look!”

  Keane had spotted Brok enter the classroom from the corner of his eye. Then he’d spotted Randy and Pete enter and gain on Brok. Seeing Pete now wrangle the little orphan into a disturbingly severe wedgie instinctively made Keane’s legs cross in sympathy.

  Wedgie administered, Randy and Pete took Brok by an arm each, and lifted him clean off the floor. They hauled him over to the soft board above which an overhead lamp had been drilled into the wall. In a single swoop, they raised Brok up, hooked his protruding underwear to the lamp, and left him hanging there for all to see.

  Brok had let them get on with the process with minimal fuss, resigned to his fate, and now just hung there, motionless. “Silly me,” he said, shrugging nonchalantly at the students who were pointing at him and laughing.

  Keane couldn’t help but be glad that Brok weighed as little as he did—any heavier and he’d have gone diving head-first into the floor tiles by now.

  As Zara turned to him, Keane smiled. He fully expected her to concede his point and just hoped that she would be graceful about it.

  But instead, she flashed him a crooked grin. “So, now you remember my name, do you?”

  Keane shifted in his seat. Busted! The plump little girl with the glasses—the one who hadn’t left his side when he was a bruised and dirty little orphan, when they hadn’t even known each other—was hardly going to budge now that she knew he actually remembered her name.

  Nevertheless, he had to try. It was for her own good.

  He started to speak, but she quickly cut him off, as if she’d read his mind.

  “Look, you need to just chill a little—”

  She trailed off on seeing Keane cower as Randy and Pete passed by. The bullies high-fived each other, celebrating yet another wimpy kid aptly dealt with.

  Zara rolled her eyes. “I stand corrected. You need to chill a lot. I’m staying here. Deal with it.”

  “Fine,” Keane muttered. “Your funeral.”

  Zara began to look him up and down, almost as if she were sizing him up. Keane squinted at her, confused, but she kept at it. Whatever she was doing, it was making him extremely uncomfortable. He turned away, but she wouldn’t stop. He fidgeted awkwardly with some stationery, but her gaze persisted. He began to pray for the teacher to show up just so that those bright ochre eyes would look away.

  “You know,” Zara said finally, “last night, I dreamt of the first time we met. Do you remember that?”

  Keane’s jaw nearly hit the desk.

  He gaped at her in astonishment. This was obviously a trick of some sort. His mind raced to try and work out how she’d found out about his dream and why she considered now a good time to toy with him like this. It was a cruel joke for her to pull, especially on someone who was just trying to help her avoid another four years of bullying and torment.

  But then he thought about it for a moment. There was no possible way she could have known, not unless she was in cohorts with Brok, and the mere thought of Zara and Brok conspiring against him seemed laughable.

  He decided that she was telling the truth, and chalked the fact that they’d had the exact same dream on the exact same night up to coincidence. An i
nsane and ridiculous one, but a coincidence nonetheless.

  Keane also realized that he’d been staring at her with his mouth open this whole time, and that the persistence of his gaze was now making her blush.

  “What?” Zara asked, as her cheeks turned pink.

  What indeed, he wondered, because, try as he might, he found himself, yet again, unable to take his eyes off her, and it wasn’t just because of her dream revelation either.

  He looked from her large caramel eyes, which she now coyly averted, to her chocolate fringes, which slid across her face as she turned away, to her cheeks, which dimpled with the awkward smile now tugging at her glistening lips, and he realized what it was.

  He was falling for the girl. And falling hard.

  When she turned back to check if he was still looking, Keane fought to wrench his gaze away before he made a complete imbecile of himself. He picked a book at random, burrowed face-first into it, and only realized that he’d grabbed it upside-down after he was fully committed to the ruse, by which time he didn’t dare pull away from the pages lest she see his reddening face.

  With all the problems he was contending with, from unexplained dreams frequented by a scary, black dragon, to mysteriously glowing hands, to the Bullies and their unduly violent methods of conflict resolution, the last thing he needed in his life right now was a crippling crush on the new girl.