Forever Freaky (20 page)

“Any idea what these big plans of hers are?”
Jack asked.

“She didn’t say exactly. She just said she
wanted me to be a part of them. I tell you one thing: it’s going to
be huge—I mean, like something that will make all the papers and
the nightly news. Maybe she’ll hit the prom.”

“The prom was last Saturday,” he pointed
out.

“Oh, well, I don’t pay much attention to that
type of thing,” I said, feeling stupid. “It’s not my thing. Can you
see me at a prom, in a dress, with a corsage on my pencil-like
wrist?” He didn’t say anything, but appeared to be trying to
visualize it. “Don’t bother,” I told him. “Your imagination isn’t
good enough. Nobody’s is…. So if not the prom, then what?”

“An event that involves a lot of people.
Graduation ceremonies?”

I frowned. It didn’t sound right. “I don’t
know,” I said. “That’s just the seniors, and their families. It
doesn’t much involve the junior class.”

“Does it have to? She’s crazy, right?”

“Even crazy people aren’t totally random. I
think she might find it very satisfying to scorch her classmates in
particular. And that would tend to leave graduation out.”

“Then what?”

We looked at each other for a moment, and
then it was as though we had the same idea at the same time.

“The barbecue,” I said.

“Has to be,” Jack said. “There’s nothing
else.”

At the end of every school year, there was a
barbecue that was held a large recreational area in one of the
forest preserves just outside the city. It was a tradition that
started years ago. It was mainly intended for the graduating class,
but really everybody came—juniors, sophomores, and even freshmen
were tolerated. It was held the afternoon of the Saturday before
the last day of school. Hundreds of students showed up and poured
into the large picnic area. Dead meat was grilled and eaten. Drinks
were drunk, and not just soda and bottle juice and water. It was
the last time seniors got to act like totally idiots until they
went to college, where they could act like total idiots every
weekend. The festivities lasted until the park area was closed
down, at eleven at night. Then the forest preserve police, a
division of the county cops, would move in and clear the area.
Usually there would still be a least a hundred kids or so left,
most of them drunk as skunks and rowdy as hell. They could have
been arrested for underage drinking and other violations, of
course, but because the skimpy squad of cops was greatly
outnumbered hardly everybody ever ended up in handcuffs. It seemed
more important to get them away from county-patrolled land, where
they became the problem of city and suburban cops. Oddly, through
year after year of this ritual of reckless behavior, nobody had
ended up dead or seriously injured.

“It’s perfect,” I said, “perfect for a fiery
massacre.”

“Hundreds of people, like sitting ducks,”
Jack murmured.

“She could hide in the woods.”

“Nobody would know what hit them. Everybody
running around on fire.”

“There wouldn’t be enough ambulances.”

“And nobody would ever figure it out.”

“It would be—epic,” I said, studying the
treetop beyond the roof. Some leaves, burned black, fell away from
branches and fluttered toward the ground.

“So what do we do?” I heard Jack ask.

I looked at him. “What?”

“What do we do?” He was totally serious, as
though there were dozens of options.

I shrugged.

“There has to be something,” he said.

“Like what?”

“Maybe you can make it rain on her,” he
said.

“I’m trying not to think about that.”

“It was pretty trippy. You ever have any clue
you could do something like that?”

“Did I really do that? I was hoping it was
some weird coincidence.”

“Not much chance of that. You got mad at me,
and it started storming. No, that was you all right.”

“Just what I need—another weird ability.”

“But maybe this is a good thing,” he
said.

“Oh, Jack, you’re not going to try to
convince me there’s a bright side to this, are you?”

“Well, maybe it is. Look, why couldn’t you
rain on her? Fire and water—maybe you can put her out.”

I had to laugh at that. “Do you think it
could be so simple? These things are never that simple.” I told him
about how Amy looked when I met her in the parking lot, how the
rain never touched her but cascaded away from her as though she
were surrounded by some invisible cocoon.

“So she’s immune to you,” he said. “Well,
what about you?”

“What about me?”

“Could you be immune to her?”

“You mean, like, she wouldn’t be able to
light me on fire?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think I want
to find out, either.”

“There has to be some way to stop her,” he
insisted. “You probably understand her better than anybody else.
Maybe you can get into her head.”

“Yeah, right. That’s just what I need. If you
haven’t noticed, I’m not doing too well inside my own head.”

He thought for a moment. I found it
irritating that he never gave up on things.

“Something you just said,” he forged onward.
“She would hide in the woods. How do you know that? I mean, if she
could set your tree on fire from miles away…”

“That was just a warning,” I said, getting
wearier by the second. “This other thing is the main event. She
would want to see everybody burning. She would want to hear them
screaming in pain and terror.”

“But why?”

I sighed. “Oh, I don’t know. Because she’s
evil, because she can make it happen, because she had a bad
childhood…. I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” I said, and
pushed myself up to my feet. I walked up the slant of the roof to
the window, and climbed back into my bedroom.

I kicked off my shoes. I was lying in bed
when Jack fell through the window and landed on the floor in a
tangled mess of arms and legs. At another time I might have
laughed, watching him tumble to the floor, but not now.

“Graceful, Jack, graceful,” I commented
dully, lying on my side and watching him get to his knees.

He crawled over to the side of the bed.
Somehow he looked more attractive crawling.

“You okay?” he said.

“I’m never okay,” I said. “You can take that
as a given.”

“This stuff bothers you, doesn’t it?” he
asked.

“No, you bother me.”

He tipped his head like a confused dog.

I sighed. “I wish you really knew me, knew
what goes on in my mind. Then I wouldn’t have to explain so
much.

“This ‘stuff’ doesn’t bother me, not at all.
The idea of somebody wanting to hurt a lot of people probably seems
insane to you. It’s Amy’s fantasy, and she wants to make it real. I
know that, because it’s been my fantasy, too.”

“Hurting people?” he asked, clearly not
believing me.

“Yeah, hurting people. I’m not any different
from Amy that way.”

“I don’t believe that,” he said.

“Why not?” I wondered. “Do you even listen to
me when I talk? I’ve always tried to be honest with you, mainly
because I hoped the truth would scare you off. I can’t figure out
why that’s not working.”

“Maybe because you’re not that bad,” he
suggested. “You just think you are. You’re afraid you are. I know
that you’re not.”

“If I were you, I wouldn’t bet my life on
that,” I said. “You should leave now. I want to be alone.”

He got to his feet, and paused to look down
at me. His eyes were filled with something with which I wasn’t
familiar, something that made me uncomfortable—compassion.

“Go, Jack,” I said.

“What about Amy?”

“The picnic is a week from Saturday. We have
eight days to figure out what to do… if anything.”

“If anything?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you suggesting not doing anything?”

“Who said doing something is the right thing
to do.”

“You mean just let a lot of people get hurt,
maybe killed?”

“It happens, right?” I said. “There are
accidents. There are tragedies. People get hurt and people die.
Destiny can also be dark. Who are we to interfere with destiny?
Some people are just doomed—it’s as simple as that. Now, please, go
home. I need to get some sleep. You know how it is with me—if I
don’t take sleep when I can get it--”

“—you don’t get it,” he said morosely.

“Good boy,” I said, fighting off a yawn.

“Call you later?”

“Yeah, later, tonight, after the vampires
come out. I’m surprised you don’t want me to do something about
them, too.”

“Maybe in time,” he said, joking—I hoped he
was joking, anyway.

And then he was gone and I was asleep.

I seldom remembered my dreams. The ones I did
remember were really normal. I never had what could be described as
nightmares. There was never blood or gore or strange murderous
creatures. I never dreamt of my hands turning into claws, or any of
that psychotic stuff, either. My dreams were filled with
commonplace events that never occurred in reality. I dreamt my
parents took me to amusement parks, and I actually had fun riding
on bizarrely large rides: a Ferris wheel fifty stories high, a
carousel that couldn’t fit in a football field, a roller coaster
that seemed to climb up to heaven before dropping back to earth…. I
had blue eyes and blond hair. I had dimples and a sweet smile. I
was Jules but not Jules; I was what I might have been in a
different life, a life free of the bizarre. I knew what it was like
to feel things that others felt every day but took for granted. I
felt love and joy, and everything else I never felt in the waking
world.

Sometimes I had vivid dreams, the kind that
reflected things that would happen. I had one of these after Jack
had left my room that day, a short snippet of some future
insanity.

… I am running through twilit woods. The
trees around me are huge and surreal under the moonlight that
spills through the leaf-less branches above. The ground is clammy
under my gym shoes, which make frantic sticky sounds as I weave a
mindless path through the thick tree trunks.

Something dead is chasing me, some snarling
mass of darkness so close behind me I dare not pause to turn round
and see its face. I know I cannot run forever but I have no other
choice. I have to run and run and run just to stay alive. For a
second I think it has fallen back a little, maybe enough for me to
turn and fight, maybe enough for me to focus my mind on it and
drive it away. Should I do it? Should I try? Or should I just
die?

My instincts tell me to give up—they always
do. But there is something else inside me, barely there, something
like hope, something like love, faraway voices in my mind,
whispering “Fight, fight, fight, survive, survive, survive,”
without giving me any reason, any future purposes, any promises.
Like a fool, I listen to them; I turn and face my foe, my
destroyer. I catch a glimpse of its red eyes, its long fangs, as it
pounces on my so swiftly I cannot draw a breath to scream before
its teeth tear into the flesh of my face, before its crushing
weight drives me to the ground, from which I will never rise…

Gasping, I sat up in bed in the dark room,
knowing now what I had always wondered: how I would die? It was
weird, and somehow comforting, to know for sure. Some large evil
thing would kill me some day. I would not crack, and slit my own
wrists. My body would not fade away, worn down by the powers inside
me. And I would not die by fire, Amy’s or anybody else’s.

I flipped the switch with my mind, and light
flooded my room. I squinted and looked around my room. Everything
within it seemed less real than what I had just witnessed in my
dream. My black cat alarm clock said it was 10:53 in glowing orange
numbers. There was a plate of diced fruit and a can of Coke on my
night stand. Oddly this was how I received most of my dinners, my
mom sneaking into my room while I slept and depositing a plate on
my night stand. I hanged my legs over the side of the bed, and
started to pick at the fruit, which, like, the Coke, was warm.

My phone beeped and I dug it out of my
pocket. Jack had called three times, and left one voice
message.

“I’ve been thinking about things,” he said,
not sounding so sure. “Let’s forget this whole thing, okay? I wish
I never brought it up. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

I snorted. Jack’s timing was horrible. Now he
wanted to leave it all alone. Why couldn’t he have left it alone at
the beginning? Then it would have been easy to look the other way.
Now it was impossible, because it had become personal. Threats had
been made. My tree—not that I even liked the big ugly thing—had
burned. And now I had to prove, if only to myself, that I was not
exactly like Amy.

I took a swig of warm soda, and called him
back. He sounded drowsy.

“Just let them burn,” he said.

“Sorry, can’t do that.”

“What?” He sounded more panicked than
surprised.

“I can’t just let some crazy bitch burn up a
bunch of people.”

“But you said you could,” he protested.

“Well, I changed my mind—I can do that, you
know.”

“So what are you planning on doing?” he asked
uneasily.

“I’m going to fuck her up.”

The next day, Friday, I didn’t go to school.
I didn’t want to chance running into Amy. It was like the beginning
of a chess game played between two extremely paranoid people.
Opening move: Amy had offered to include me in her grisly plans. My
move: I had dissed her. Her next move: she had threatened me. My
next move was pending. I figured I’d let her hang there, wondering.
Had she gone too far? What would I do now? Come right back at her?
Or would I wait? What would I come back at her with? She had seen
me control the weather, and she had to be concerned about that.
Maybe I had been lying. Maybe I had been practicing this freaky
stuff as much as she had over the past few years. Maybe I could
bean her in the head with a hunk of hail from a hundred miles away.
I wanted to keep her wondering, growing more and more paranoid.
Maybe, in the end, she would get so paranoid she would be afraid to
do anything.