He ducks and giggles, trying to pull himself up onto the countertop. Now that he’s six years old he thinks he’s surely old enough to climb like the kids he sees clambering onto tree branches. The ones he wishes he could talk to.
He struggles for a moment, his legs skittering against the side of the counter, his arms shaking with strain. Just as he’s about to fall back to the floor, a strong arm surrounds him and lifts him up.
He’s sitting next to the cake.
“It’s called devil’s food cake because it tastes so good it’s almost wrong to eat it,” his father says, a gleam in his eye.
“But it’s not wrong?” the boy asks.
“Not everything that people say is wrong actually is,” his father explains.
Like many things his father says, he’s not sure he understands. Why would people say something is wrong when it isn’t? But he doesn’t ask, because all he really wants is to eat the cake.
His father begins to set out plates and forks, but Janice waves him away. “Let’s just eat it,” she says.
“It hasn’t cooled,” his father says.
“It’s cool enough,” Janice says. “You first.” She motions to the boy. “Happy birthday, child.”
A hungry gleam in his eyes, the boy reaches for a fork, but she stops him with a hand on his wrist. “Not with that,” she says. “Use your hands.”
The boy’s eyes widen, and for a moment he wonders if she’s testing him, but she only nods toward the cake, a wild look in her eyes. The boy grins so wide he thinks his face might split in half.
“Janice,” his father says.
“It’s okay, Michael,” Janice says. Michael? Is that his father’s name? He’s never heard Janice call him that. He can’t remember her ever calling him anything.
But he can barely think about that, can barely think about anything but the tantalizing smell of the devil’s food cake resting next to him.
Before his father can stop him, the boy reaches over and pushes his fingers into the cake, feeling the gooey warmth surround his skin. When he pulls his hand back, a fist-sized clump breaks apart. With unabashed glee, he stuffs it into his mouth. Although he opens his lips as widely as he can, smears of chocolate rub onto the skin around his mouth. He can even see a dab of chocolate hanging from his nose. He doesn’t care about any of that though, because…mmmmm!
It’s the best taste he’s ever tasted. Better than spaghetti—the red and white and brown squares that are usually his favorite food.
Unexpectedly, his father laughs. “Son, it’s all over your face. Let me help you.” He reaches for him with a cloth, but Janice’s hand shoots out faster, grabbing a handful of cake and smashing it into his father’s mouth.
“Janice!” Michael screams. At first his tone is one of protest, but as he licks his lips it morphs into one of delight. “God Almighty, this is…heavenly,” he says. “I’ve never tasted anything like it.”
Then, quick as a beam of light, he grabs a clump of chocolate and pushes it into Janice’s face. The boy stares, astonished, trying to hold back the laugh that rises up in his chest. Janice’s face looks as if she’s been playing in the mud.
To the boy’s utter shock, she laughs, her signature high squeal. It’s the truest laugh he’s ever heard, borne by a grown woman with a chocolatey smile.
For the next half hour they eat cake with their hands, oblivious to how silly they must look with chocolate all over their mouths.
Spent with his father and Janice, it’s the best day of the nameless boy’s short life.
Chapter Three
Young Harrison doesn’t understand.
No matter how many times his mother, Janice, tells him that his father is too busy to see him, he just can’t seem to wrap his small mind around why. None of the fathers of his friends at school are too busy to see them, so why his father?
“I’ll be here after school,” she says.
“You mean after sports, right?” Harrison asks. His favorite part of every day is hoverball practice. He figures if he can get good enough his dad will have to come see him play.
“Yes. After sports. Be good. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
She says that a lot, so he doesn’t give it much thought as he opens the door, accepting his portable food-maker, which will cook his lunch, from his mom. “Bye, Mom,” he says, shutting the door without looking back. He hustles away from the aut-car, hoping she’ll program it to pull away without making a scene. For some reason, she can’t always seem to help herself, like when she directed the car to honk its horn a half-dozen times, or when she made it blare some kind of old lady music through the open window. His friends still make fun of him for that.
When he hears the engine whir and the vehicle drive off, he lets out a sigh of relief, glad she was normal today.
“Incoming!” someone yells.
At the edge of his vision, Harrison sees the hoverball zipping toward him. Without thinking, he jerks to the right, thrusting the hand carrying his portable food-maker upwards to protect his head. With a heavy thump, the hoverball slams into the food-maker and ricochets away.
Horrified, he inspects the dented frame of his food-maker.
His best friend, Chuck Boggs, jogs up to him and slaps him on the back, laughing hysterically. “That. Was. Awesome!” he exclaims between fits of laughter.
Despite the damage to his food-maker, Harrison can’t hold back a smile. “How fast was I?”
Chuck brushes a wild tuft of reddish hair out of his eyes. “Like a speeding aut-car. No, like lightning. Or a rocket. Yeah, you were as fast as a rocket!”
Harrison keeps on grinning. “Do you think Coach will put me at keeper on Saturday?” he asks.
“Duh,” Chuck says. “You’ve got the quickest hands of any kid on the team. And you never fall off your hoverboard.”
Although he gets a thrill from his friend’s compliments, the food-maker weighs heavy in his arms. “My mom is going to kill me,” he mutters, displaying the massive dent.
“Nah. She’ll get over it and just buy you a new one. How’s your weird mom today anyway?”
He feels a pang of anger in his stomach, but he clenches his gut and it goes away. “As weird as ever,” he says, which, as usual, makes Chuck laugh. Making fun of his mom seems to be a sure-fire way to make and keep his friends. He may not ever see his father, but at least he has a lot of friends.
“Come on. Let’s go,” Chuck says, pushing him in the direction of the school, where dozens of kids are filing inside. As they push into the flow, Chuck says, “I heard they’re closing in on the Slip.”
Harrison shrugs. All Chuck ever seems to want to talk about is the Slip. Chuck’s father works for the cops, so he guesses it makes sense, but at the same time, just because Harrison’s father works for Pop Con doesn’t mean he follows the Slip news.
“So you don’t know if the rumors are true?” Chuck asks, nudging him with an elbow when Harrison doesn’t respond.
Harrison wishes he could be honest with his friend, could tell him that he barely sees his father, much less talks to him. “It’s top secret,” Harrison says instead.
“Oh, come on! You’re killing me!” Chuck says.
“Sorry.”
As they enter the building through the body scanners, Harrison wonders whether finding the Slip would mean his dad wouldn’t have to work so much.
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David Estes, Lifemarked (The Fatemarked Epic Book 5)
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