The Dark Side of Nowhere

  “Sorry,” Paula said, when she realized what she had done. Then she asked, “Do you think your shots have anything to do with that epidemic?”

  I had considered the possibility. “Maybe,” I said. But I was beginning to suspect that the connection could not be like anything we were considering, because that implied that the epidemic was really an epidemic and the shot was merely a vaccination. No one needed a vaccination every month.

  “We could get together after school,” Paula suggested when the bell rang. “Search the Web until we find something.”

  I would have been happy to surf the Internet with her, but it was Tuesday.

  I had seen Grant in the hall earlier. He had nodded a greeting, and although he didn’t say it, the nod was a reminder to be there. At the barn. Today.

  “I-I can’t,” I stammered.

  Paula crossed her arms and tilted back in her chair. “More shots?” she said.

  “Just a meeting. . . .”

  “What kind of meeting?”

  I realized that I was on the verge of becoming a new subject of investigation—until Wesley, who had been eavesdropping from the doorway, stepped in for the rescue.

  “Boy Scouts,” he said. “We’re Boy Scouts.”

  Paula looked at me, amused. “You’re a Boy Scout?”

  I looked away, mortified by the mere suggestion, and I guess she took my embarrassment as an admission of guilt.

  “A Boy Scout, huh?” she said. “Well, I guess everyone needs a deep, dark secret.”

  Then she sauntered out to class, still chuckling to herself.

  Once she was gone, I turned to Wesley, fuming. “I didn’t need your boneheaded help,” I told him.

  “Well, what were you going to tell her?” he asked. “I’ll bet you’ve already told her too much already!”

  It took me a second to realize what Wesley was saying. Then my jaw slipped open in dumb bewilderment—an expression I would soon be very familiar with.

  Wesley grinned, intensely pleased to have me, for once, at a major disadvantage.

  “See you in Old Town,” he said as he left. “Don’t forget your glove.”

  –5–

  TARGET PRACTICE

  “Make your weapon an extension of your fighting spirit.”

  Behind a barn, beyond a hill, in the loneliest corner of Old Town Billington, I met thirty others that afternoon. I knew them all. Both boys and girls—some from my grade, some younger, but all familiar faces. Each wore an identical glove, fit to match the size of his or her arm.

  “Feel your weapon’s power become your own.”

  I had walked through the eerie streets of the ghost town alone, but as I had neared the barn, I saw them all sifting through the woods. They greeted me, as friends do, but there was suddenly a camaraderie that had never been there before. Like a secret club—no, like a secret order. A gathering with some deep significance I had yet to know.

  “Who you are—who you think you are—leave it behind.”

  I stood beside Wesley in a huge clearing behind the barn. We were arranged in a circle, facing outward, carefully aiming at scarecrow targets in the distance. A rifle range with no rifles—only our ironclad wrists.

  “Grant gave me my glove two months ago,” Wesley told me over the constant sound of firing weapons. “I still need lots of practice, though.”

  My head was still spinning from the depth of his deception. I didn’t know whether to be impressed by it or to punch him out. “Since when can you keep secrets?” I asked.

  “Wesley shrugged. “I can keep them when they’re about me.”

  He pointed two fingers at two different targets and fired. There were some kids who had progressed to firing four-finger shots at a time, but as it was my first day, Grant had instructed me to focus on one finger at a time, until I could isolate my muscles and fire each one in succession, accurately hitting my target every time. As I had been practicing on my own, I mastered the exercise pretty quickly. It really annoyed Wes, whose eye-hand coordination never got beyond cutting his own meat.

  “Your heads are filled with poison notions that are all untrue.”

  Grant paced the inner circumference of the circle, spouting encouragement and strange profundities behind us. His voice had the conviction of a prophet—quite different from his security-janitorial utterings around school. Even if I didn’t know what he was talking about, it sounded important. It made me feel important. It made me feel part of something unusual and spectacular.

  “Your destiny has been buried beneath a lifetime of lies.”

  I dared to fire in two directions at once. Both shots hit their targets.

  “Claim your destiny.”

  Wesley grunted, as though chalking it up to beginner’s luck, refusing to admit that I had already gotten better at it than him. I fired again, really beginning to enjoy the recoil as the bearings pulsed out of my fingertips.

  “So what’s the deal with Grant?” I asked when Grant’s inner orbit had taken him to the far side of the circle.

  Wes glanced at him and said, “His satellite dish is pointed in the wrong direction.”

  I laughed. “He’s got a screw loose, you mean?”

  Wesley just stared at me, blinking. “No, his satellite dish is pointed in the wrong direction. Next time you pass his house, check it out.”

  “Remember what you once were. Imagine what you’ll soon become.”

  I turned to my target and fired again, but my concentration was gone. “So he’s got some weird uplink going on? Maybe he’s a spy,” I suggested.

  “Nah,” said Wesley. “I think it’s a government thing—and maybe we’re guinea pigs testing out this new weapon.” He fired two shots, and finally hit his targets. “Everyone’s got a theory, but no one knows for sure.”

  Coming from a guy who had two months to consider what might really be going on, Wesley’s theory didn’t ring true. But then I had a bit more information than he did. I thought of the picture of Billy Chambers, who was now standing ten feet away, chewing a wad of bubble gum as he aimed at his targets, as if it were just another baseball game. I thought of the message carved in the house down the street. I thought of Ethan, whose name was quickly slipping out of conversations. Out of sight and out of mind. Then I thought about Paula, and how she didn’t get shots. Was it all related—or did I just want it to be?

  “Your lives are about to become more important than any on earth. Be ready.”

  I cleared my throat and whispered to Wes, “Wes, I’ve been thinking, what if lots of people don’t get shots?”

  He giggled nervously at the mention of the word. “Yeah, and I’ll bet they don’t go to the bathroom, either—they just hold it in, like on TV.”

  “I’m serious!” I grabbed his arm, and he accidentally fired a shot into the grass, just missing my toe.

  “Watch it!” he shouted.

  “Wes, what if we’re the only ones—only us kids here, and our parents?”

  “You’re being dumb,” said Wes, but he didn’t seem too sure of it.

  I scanned the line of kids again. It wasn’t just that all the faces were familiar—the collection of faces was familiar. I’d seen all of these kids together before.

  When I finally realized where, I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t known from the beginning.

  “We all go to the same church!” I announced to Wesley. On the occasions that my parents drag me to Holy Circle Nondenominational, these are the faces I see there. The ones I used to see in Sunday school. Maybe they weren’t all friends of mine, but we were bound by that link.

  “Your parents have chosen to forget. You’ll make them remember.”

  Wes looked around him, like the connection between all of us was just a minor curiosity. “Yeah, I guess so,” he said. “What’s the big deal? I mean, there’s only like four churches in Billington.”

  “Our parents all knew each other before we were born,” I explained to Wesley. “These are the kids of our parents’ clos
est friends.”

  I could see the machinery grinding in Wes’s head, like an old-fashioned cash register, struggling to make change. Then finally ka-ching!

  “Hey, that is kind of weird, huh?”

  “Weird isn’t the word.” I knew that this wasn’t just a realization—it was a major discovery. It was like stumbling over a hill to find yourself staring at the Grand Canyon. Too wide to take in its scope, too deep to fathom its depth.

  “You think, maybe,” said Wes, taking a good long look at his glove, “that the government’s gone and done something to all of us?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think the government’s that organized.” And then I added, “I don’t think any government is.”

  “What, then?”

  But my answer was a stutter, then silence. Too wide. Too deep. I was riding the tilt-a-whirl again.

  Then I felt a firm hand on my shoulder. I knew it was Grant.

  “You’re a natural,” he told me. “I knew you would be. There’s no substitute for instinct.” He looked at me like a proud father, and I have to admit that in the midst of everything I was feeling, I did feel proud. Proud enough to put questions to him that no one else had the nerve to ask.

  “Why are we learning this? Why us? Why here in Old Town? And who are you?”

  I could almost see the questions slide off the Teflon coat of his personality. He smiled, and tapped my shoulder again. “The question is not who am I, Jason, but who are you?”

  In usual circumstances, enigmatic people tick me off. I guess because most people who try to be mysterious usually have nothing worth being mysterious about. But Grant was different. He did seem to have something he was keeping padlocked in his brain, and it gave him an aura of confidence that made my questions seem silly, and unimportant. I wanted to be annoyed, but instead I found myself admiring him. For as long as I’ve known him, I’d seen him as a janitor and little more. But now I’d never see him like that again.

  Then he leaned over and whispered something to me.

  “You can’t imagine how different things will be tomorrow.”

  –6–

  MAN ON FIRST

  I’ve never seen the ocean, but I know what it’s like to ride the crest of a wave and feel part of something much larger than yourself.

  When I left Old Town, I was feeling invincible. I knew there was still a mother lode of unanswered questions, but I wasn’t afraid of them. At least not then. It had been a bright afternoon, filled with high spirits. Even Old Town didn’t seem so eerie to me as I left.

  The sunset was spectacular as I came out of the woods and into the open fields. The sky was orange, and the clouds flamed red and purple. Crosswinds sliced them into jagged, bold angles, and it seemed that the heavens were so intense that they overwhelmed the dreary earth below. The sky was mystical and larger than life.

  But it wasn’t just the sky. The immensity of what was brewing in Billington was something you could feel—something you could almost smell, like the ionized air after a thunderstorm.

  I felt sure going home would catapult me back to the ordinary. Tuesday night was meat loaf and mashed potatoes night, followed by an evening of “quality time,” which could be anything from renting a family movie to a game of Trivial Pursuit—which, in Billington, wasn’t a game but a lifestyle choice.

  No, I was meant for greater things on this wildly charged evening.

  When I got to the road, I pulled my bike out from behind the tree where I had left it, and headed toward Paula’s house.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Whatever happened to hello?”

  “Hello. What are you doing here?”

  Paula was out front, throwing a Frisbee with her dog in the fading light. The dog growled, sniffed me, then returned its full attention to the Frisbee.

  “I was just passing by,” I said. “I guess I wanted to see if you found out anything new.”

  “Nothing,” she said. “Except that people around here become borderline psychotic when you mention Old Town.”

  “Like how?”

  “Like they suddenly have to go answer a phone I don’t hear ringing or they look around anxiously as if someone had put them under surveillance.”

  “People are superstitious about it,” I offered.

  “Some,” she agreed, “but for others, it seems to go beyond that.”

  The dog came back. I put down my pack, which held the heavy weight of my glove, then took the Frisbee and hurled it as far as I could.

  When I turned back to Paula, I couldn’t think of anything worth saying, so I just smiled and kept looking at her. Under normal circumstances, an uncomfortable pause with a girl would have left me borderline psychotic myself—looking away, picking at my nails, grinding my teeth nervously—but not in this particular here and now. My aura of confidence was still lingering all around me.

  “Why did you really come here?” she asked with a smirk.

  I didn’t answer. I just leaned forward and kissed her.

  You should keep in mind that I was not a master of smooth moves—in fact, my general behavior around girls was the social equivalent of a midair collision. But this move was a perfect landing.

  The dog returned and began to growl tentatively. Usually I like dogs.

  Paula took the Frisbee and hurled it with her pitching arm.

  “Get lost, Mookie.” I could tell she wanted both dog and disc to go as far as the next county.

  The Frisbee went far but curved wildly and landed on her roof. Mookie went after it, oblivious.

  I smiled. “Did I ruin your no-hitter?”

  She punched me in the stomach, not hard enough to hurt.

  “Don’t even think of stealing second,” she told me, “because I’ll pick you off with no mercy.”

  And that was fine. I wasn’t thinking any lofty goals here. That wasn’t my style. Then it occurred to me that I really didn’t have a style until that moment. I giggled, then kissed her again.

  A few moments later, a screen door squeaked open and she pushed me away. Mrs. Quinn appeared, silhouetted against the door frame. I didn’t know if she had seen, but I realized that I didn’t care. At that moment, I felt I could have charmed my way out of anything.

  “Paula, come in for dinner,” said her mom. “Who’s that you’re with?”

  “Just a friend from school,” she said. “We were talking about science.”

  Then Mrs. Quinn, who was not blessed with good night vision, said, “Would she like to stay for dinner?”

  “No,” said Paula, “she was just leaving.”

  Mrs. Quinn went back inside, and Paula turned to me, but this time we both kept our distance.

  You can’t imagine how different things will be tomorrow, I thought, and smiled. I thought of the glove in my bag, and the unexpected boldness that brought me to this moment. “Do you ever feel,” I asked Paula, “like you’re hanging on the edge of the biggest moment of your life?”

  She rolled her eyes. “It’s not that big a deal,” she said. But then she realized that I wasn’t just talking about us.

  “What’s going on with you, Jason?”

  “I’ll tell you the second I know,” I promised her. I went over to her and kissed her again—just a quick one, like a pinch to make sure it was real.

  “See you in school,” I said, and rode off boldly into the fading sunset.

  When I got home, all was not well.

  “I came to pick you up at school this afternoon, but you had already left,” said Mom, with an urgency in her voice that had nothing to do with my lateness for dinner. In fact, I noticed there was no smell of meat loaf in the house at all. The table was void of either utensils or leftovers. There was no dinner tonight, and she was busy going through drawers. “Where were you?” she asked.

  “Just hanging out with Wesley,” I told her, which wasn’t entirely untrue.

  She didn’t seem concerned with my answer at all. I watched as she pulled some photos of the
three of us from a drawer, then crossed to the sofa and slid them into the side of a suitcase. Suddenly my appetite, which had seemed all-important just a moment before, vanished. There was some powerful unpleasantness going on. I swallowed hard, and my voice cracked as I asked, “Who’s leaving?”

  The door had opened, and Dad came in with another dusty suitcase he had pulled from the garage. “All of us,” he said.

  As I glanced into the bedroom, I saw more over-stuffed suitcases piled on the bed. I didn’t even know we had that many suitcases—we never go anywhere.

  “There’s a case on your bed,” said Mom. “I’ve already packed most of your clothes. Anything else you want, pack it in there.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Elsewhere,” Dad answered. “Someplace far from here.”

  The moment had all the elements of a pillow-shredding nightmare: You finally start dating the girl of your dreams, and your parents decide it’s time to enter the Witness Protection Program.

  About a million thoughts, images, and emotions flashed through my mind. I thought I might yell at them; I thought I might demand some answers. I thought I might just take off and run. But in the end, I realized that I had my own variable to add into this nasty little equation.

  Instead of saying anything, I merely reached into my backpack and pulled out my glove, holding it in front of me, so that they could see.

  It stopped them dead in their tracks. Considering the things Grant had been saying, I thought it might play a part in whatever was going on, but I never expected the reaction I got. They stared at me standing there defiantly. Finally Dad spoke, his face turning red.

  “Where did you get that?” His voice was a furious growl.

  I felt my hands shaking a bit but didn’t give in to fear.

  “First you tell me why we’re packing.”

  In an instant Dad was on me. He grabbed me by my shirt and pushed me hard against the wall. I could hear things falling in the china cabinet on the other side.

  “Who gave it to you?”

  “John!” warned my mother.

  My father loosened his grip. “Answer me!”