Brightside (10 page)

I obliged. Got on top of Corey’s chest and kept punching his face. Made it so he wouldn’t ever say anything about anyone’s mom again. Then I grabbed his head and slammed it into the ground so he wouldn’t even think it.

A giant hand flung me off and I smacked into the wall. Mr. Mosley got on his knees, wiped the blood off Corey’s face. He told Gina to get the nurse.

My father was called.

I was suspended. We drove home in silence. I’d rarely heard his thoughts. He’d always kept his distance, seemed to move when I got in range.

I was afraid to listen in the car, already knew he was pissed. He told Mr. Mosley the suspension wasn’t nearly as bad as what I had coming at home.

As we passed by the high school’s football field, I thought back to our game, spiking the ball. Steven’s robot dance.

Dad was so pissed he could barely speak. “I told you never to cheat.”

“What?”

“I told you
never
to cheat!”

I hadn’t mentioned the game to Mr. Mosley or my dad.

“So I’m going to make this real goddamn clear. If you ever pull that shit again at school, with your friends, with anyone…”

I could hear his guilty thoughts, the ones about whipping me with his belt.

“Dad?”

I’m sorry. I should have told you.

And right there I learned I wasn’t alone.

Dad pulled the car over and told me the truth. Some of it was out loud. The rest was just between us. He said Mom didn’t
need to know. She knew enough. About him. But not about me. It’d be too much to handle. I had to keep it in check, had to learn to control myself, hide what I could do to keep us safe.

They’d split us up, send me to live in an orphanage. My father would lose his job, the one he hated, but it put food on the table, a roof over our heads.

I asked if there were others. He told me there were, but that we should never associate, never seek them out. The world was already starting to learn the truth. Soon they’d start coming for us. Brightside didn’t exist yet. But there’d be repercussions.

Dad said people were being institutionalized. Thrown in nuthouses. Like my grandmother.

“I thought she lived in Florida?” I said.

“She does. Just not in a condo.”

My entire life, I thought Dad hated me. Turns out, he was just scared, trying to protect me.

After that, things changed. We went on more trips. He helped me be a better son, giving me silent instructions to help Mom in the kitchen with the dishes.

He showed me how to hunt. Taught me to field-strip a shotgun. Bolt always rounded-side up. Center the hook in the receiver. The slide should drop right in.

Dad learned all this in the War. He said it was the last time he’d abused his ability. It saved his life, but got his platoon killed.

The shotgun was my grandfather’s. A Mossberg 12-gauge. American metal. Dad took me to the range, let me fire it. The kick nearly ripped off my shoulder. I never wanted to shoot it again. Dad said, “Never let fear take control.”

He loved to lecture. I was young enough to listen, just couldn’t put it into action. I didn’t tell anyone what I could do, but I couldn’t stop hearing others’ thoughts. I’d hear answers for tests. When I discovered Lacy liked me in seventh grade, I got my first kiss. I couldn’t turn off the thoughts, no matter how many times Dad told me I could. He said I just had to focus my mind. We got into fights. I ran away twice. Came back only to fight some more.

When I moved out for good at seventeen, Dad begged me to reconsider. He didn’t want to be left alone with Mom. He grew paranoid. Refused to leave the house. He’d call me at odd hours once he heard about Brightside. He sent me articles about the town, but always hidden on the back of an article about something else: fishing, a new vodka, the risks of smoking. He didn’t want to draw suspicions, said I couldn’t either. I didn’t want to hear it. I told him I was smart, I wasn’t going to get caught. But that was before Saul, before BMW, before Michelle.

* * *

Dad’s Brightside gifts didn’t stop with Billy Bass. He sent a fishing pole. More D-Cell batteries. He sent a tuning fork, even though I’d never played an instrument. His letter said I should learn new hobbies. He wrote he’d been learning to kayak.

None of it made sense. I worried he’d developed dementia. It explained the last few years, the paranoia. There were studies linking telepathy to brain damage.

I shoved all the gifts in the closet. Some I didn’t even unwrap. I didn’t want to think about him, that if I’d just listened to his advice, I’d be in the real world, not staring at Rachel’s empty desk every day or hiding from Krystal in the Square.

The darkness was closing in. I didn’t want to leave my room. I just wanted to stay in bed, stare at nothing, but I didn’t have a choice. Isolation got you sent to The Cabin so I looked for reasons to go outside and act like everything was fine. I took walks, hung out with Danny, bought him some new comic books. He reminded me of Steven. But as bad as it was for Steven and me as kids, it was nothing compared to how Danny had it. The out loud taunts hurt, but not nearly as much as the silent ones, the kind even bullies kept to themselves.

Danny had heard them all, but somehow he was still happy. I envied Danny and tried to learn from him. I even stopped feeling sorry for myself about Rachel, Michelle, Krystal…

But still I felt awful for how things ended with Steven.

By eighth grade we’d stopped hanging out, rarely spoke. I’d been listening to other people’s thoughts, started hanging out with the jocks, the pretty girls. I knew what they wanted to hear. Said all the right things to make them think I was cool. Steven wasn’t, never would be, so I cut him off.

Then he got sick. Real sick. His parents pulled him out of school. I knew I should visit, but I couldn’t face him.

Dad found out, heard me thinking one night at dinner when Mom asked how Steven was doing.

Dad drove me to Steven’s house to make me apologize. He sat in the car, while everything was yelling at me to run. I breathed in, breathed out, told myself I’d be okay. I didn’t use the doorbell because I didn’t want to wake Steven’s parents if they were sleeping. I’d asked Dad to just let me do this over the phone, but he refused, said I needed to look Steven in the face, hear what Steven was really feeling.

I knocked on the door, prayed his parents would tell me to go home.

I didn’t know his parents well, even though I’d been over there a hundred times. They kept to themselves and never said a whole lot, hardly ever more than hello. Steven said they didn’t really speak English, but I knew he just didn’t want them doing it around me, embarrassed of how they sounded.

Steven’s mom opened the door, her straight black hair now frosted gray, her eyes tired black holes above pursed lips.

I bowed my head to show respect. “Hello, Mrs. Chang. Can I see Hong?”

Calling Steven by his real name reminded me why I’d cut him off in the first place.

Mrs. Chang gave the slightest nod and stepped to the side, revealing the path of clear plastic protecting the bright white carpet.

I slipped off my shoes and set them next to the other two pairs. His mom was waiting, not saying a word, glad I was there.

The plastic crinkled under my feet, the sweet smell of rice mixed with incense. I couldn’t turn back so I went down the hall. Steven’s room was the last one on the left.

The door was closed, nothing on it, his sign gone. HONG’S ROOM, nice and neat block letters, the most rebellious thing I ever convinced him to do, no way he’d ever write Steven.

I opened his door. His room used to be blue. Now it was brilliant white, every single inch. No more Star War
s
posters. No superhero cardboard cut-outs below them. All of it was gone, Steven was done with childhood.

Everything else was just as white. The carpet, the walls, the ceiling. The
candles in the corners. Everything gone except the giant silk screen that hung in front of the window, the soft white fabric with its border so green, a blue river and a big white bird floating down the middle of it.

I stepped forward. Steven, whiter than he’d ever been. So pale. So weak. So small.

Steven’s head was propped three pillows high. All his hair was gone, all that was left was his skull and some skin, his thin slits for eyes staring straight ahead at the picture. He was thinking about death and what it would be like.

Steven winced and let out a long sigh that sounded painful to say. “
Unnhhhh
.” Keeping his hand under the sheet, he grabbed hold of his hip. His bones hurt. All the time, even with the meds.

I stepped closer so my legs touched the bed. Seeing him like this made it hard to think. I didn’t know if I should call him by his real name. I cleared my throat so I wouldn’t scare him and said, “Hey, man.”

Steven slowly turned his head and blinked twice. His thoughts trying to figure out how he felt about me. If he hated me for making fun of him at school because he still played Dungeons and Dragons or if he was too embarrassed to be seen like this, bald, deteriorating, naked under the sheet.
Or if he was just glad someone had finally cared enough to come.

I had no idea what to do. No one had ever told me what to say to someone dying. Someone who had less than ten days, two weeks at the most according to our teacher, Mrs. Kauffman. She’d made us make this giant card. We all signed our names, some words of encouragement. I only wrote, “Feel better.”

I nodded at the picture covering the window. “Cool goose.”

Steven spoke so low, I had to lean forward. “Swan,” he said. “That’s what Hong means.”

I’d never thought his name actually translated into anything. “That’s what it means?”

“Not gorilla,” Steven said through a cough. Then smiled.

For a second it was like old times. Then his smile twisted into a grimace because he realized that even the shittiest, loneliest, most humiliating times would be better than no times at all. He’d
sit through Corey’s little dance all day every day if it meant getting better.

I pointed at the swan. “I’ll take it down. You want me to?”

“They know best.” He paused to catch his breath. “They say I’m just a child.”

I didn’t know what to say, so my lips stayed still. I thought,
I’m so sorry.

Steven’s eyes grew wide. I’d never spoken to someone in thought. He looked frightened, and I took off running, ran all the way to the car. Dad knew what I’d done, but this time he didn’t lecture.

Two days later, Steven was gone, taking my secret to the grave.

Night 58, lightning flashed on the other side of the mountain, a loud boom less than a second behind it. The freezing rain fell in sheets.

I was out walking and got caught in the storm. I took off for the Square, ended up at Riley’s, the tiny, dark tavern at the edge of town. Cheap vinyl booths lined the walls. The door to the storage room was propped open with a brick. A woman with a brown braided ponytail was dragging a keg. The way she moved said she’d been doing this her whole life. She was covered in tattoos, her strangely hypnotic eyes pulling me to the bar.

She wiped her hands on the back of her low-cut jeans. She was definitely new to Brightside. Still, there was something familiar.

She smiled and leaned over the counter, her voice rougher than expected. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Maybe, I don’t know.”

“Well, that’s no good. What are you having?”

“Beer.”

She said that wouldn’t do, not in my condition. She offered to make me something special. I shrugged. I hadn’t had a drop of anything since Day 39, the day they dragged Rachel from my room.

The bartender said her name was
Lexi
. She asked mine and I told her. Then she wanted to know my last name and said, “I’ve heard of you.”
I had a hard time believing that with her acting so nice. She told me to stop being ridiculous and have a seat.

I pulled out a stool, sat down, and reached for my wallet.

“Put that away,” she said. “First one’s on the house.”

“I’m probably going to only have one, so I should just…”

She told me to stop being silly, but I did way more than that, my thoughts drifting to Steven’s funeral.

“You’re a dark one, aren’t you?”

I shifted back on the stool, considered leaving.

“Just give me a smile and I promise to make it better.”

Lexi
was too pretty not to smile at. She walked to the back wall, the rows of bottles three stacks high. She asked where I was from.

“Outside Columbus.” Saying that made me feel like a tourist, like this was simply a business trip. Tomorrow, I’d be home sitting with my dog curled up at my feet.

Lily…filled with bullets on my carpet.

“Hey, stop that. There’s no bad thoughts when you get a free drink.”