Loss (10 page)

The teacher droned on, and Billy pretended to take notes. The Ice Cream Man hadn’t pursued Billy when he’d run away all those years ago. There’d been no need: The White Rider had gotten his promise. That thought made him grip his pen tight enough to whiten his knuckles. The Ice Cream Man had tricked him, and now he had a white patch in his hair and a Bow lying on his bed.

“You have to admit,” said Death, “you’ve never seen anything like it.”

As the end-of-period bell sounded, Billy stuffed his books into his backpack and thought about the Bow. He remembered the polished sheen of the black wood, how it gleamed like it had been carved from obsidian. And he remembered the jolt of power he’d felt as his fingers brushed its surface.

Power.

What could he do if he wielded such power? Not that he wanted to bring disease to the world—no, not that, not at all—but wouldn’t it be sweet to be the one that people respected? The one that they feared?

What would it be like to be powerful?

He pictured himself standing with his back against the school lockers as Eddie Glass got in his face. This time, Billy wasn’t paralyzed by fear. He saw himself blocking blows instead of taking them, saw himself landing a solid punch in Eddie’s gut. Billy’s mouth twitched, and as he imagined Eddie doubled over and wheezing, Billy pressed his lips together in a grim smile. Yes. That was what he wanted—to be strong, to be unafraid. To be confident.

To be powerful.

He thought now not just of Eddie but also of Joe and Kurt and all the others who’d hurt him, everyone who’d ever beaten him until his body was awash in a rainbow of colors—the bruised purples, festering greens, sickly yellows, wounded reds. He thought of laughter, of jeers, of faceless mockery and brutal hands.

“You’re good at caging it,”
said the girl in red.
“But soon enough, it will claw its way free.”

Rage surged through him, and he thought of how good it would feel to finally put them all in their place. He had a Bow. Why not use it?

“Look at the birdshit in your hair!”

Startled out of his dark thoughts, he looked up to see Kurt grinning down at him, surrounded by three cheerleader types giggling like rabid hyenas. Kurt pointed at Billy’s white-streaked hair and started guffawing.

“Birdshit,” Kurt said gleefully around his chortles. “Birdshit!”

Billy bolted out of his chair, throwing his backpack over his shoulder as he rushed out the classroom.
Stupid hair!
he thought as he stormed down the hall. He should have just cut the offending white hairs off. Too late now; the damage had been done.

He shoved the top of the hood down to his nose, but it wasn’t enough. Like a communicable disease, knowledge of his white hair stripe spread everywhere—he could see it in people’s wicked grins and pointing fingers. Kurt or one of the hyena cheerleaders must have texted it. Or maybe the rest of the school was linked telepathically. However it had happened, everyone suddenly knew that Billy Ballard’s hair had been skunked. Halfway to PE, the hallway morphed into a sea of hands, all reaching out to yank on the white lock to see if it would tear away from his scalp. Fingers and arms and elbows sprang from everywhere, swarmed over him like ants on a honeypot. He slapped them away, but that did nothing to stanch the flow or to muffle the jeers and taunts. Bombarded by flesh, he watched, helpless, as a teacher walked right past him.

See that?
he thought wildly.
They don’t care. They never care. They promise to protect you but then they leave you they ignore you they look the other way—

A beefy hand yanked his hood back so quickly that the seam popped. And then he was face to face with Eddie Glass.

“Nice stripe,” said Eddie, leering. “Does it come out?” He grabbed a chunk of Billy’s hair and pulled. Hard.

Something in Billy’s head quietly snapped. It was an audible sound, a soft click that flipped off everything that paralyzed him at the thought of fighting back. It was the sound of Billy hitting his breaking point. He looked at Eddie’s face and didn’t see the bully who’d been tormenting him for years.

He saw a target.

Billy lifted his hand, knowing the Bow would already be in his grip. And it was: It felt
right
, as if the wood had been carved for his hand alone. He didn’t worry about the way the Bow had simply appeared, or about the way the hall was now warping and stretching, pulling Eddie back until the larger boy was twenty feet away from him. The Bow was in his hand and his prey was before him; the time for worry was long past.

The world around him grew silent as he took aim. His fingers hooked on the bowstring and drew it back smoothly, easily. He couldn’t say if the pull was five pounds or five hundred; he pulled, and the string drew back, as naturally as him taking his next breath. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t see or feel the bowstring. He
believed
it was there—oh yes, Billy believed. The bow was his religion and the drawstring, his faith. And the arrow fletching that kissed his cheek was proof of God. His vision tunneled, giving him a clear view of the surprise flickering in Eddie’s piggy eyes.

Billy Ballard let fly his poisoned arrow.

In front of him, Eddie staggered. He blinked, then blinked again, and his wide face suddenly flushed. One hand covering his mouth, he drunkenly turned and stumbled down the hall. He didn’t make it ten feet before he doubled over, vomiting. Around him, other students screeched and leaped out of the way.

Billy lowered the Bow and watched Eddie succumb to another bout of nausea. And then, as the other boy fell to his knees and cradled his stomach, Billy began to smile. He barely noticed how all of the students who’d been accosting him just moments ago were now scuttling away, and when the next-period bell rang the sound seemed muffled, distant. Billy’s gaze was locked on to Eddie’s form, and he watched as the large boy huddled next to a pool of vomit. Sweat gleamed on Eddie’s pimpled brow, and he shook uncontrollably.

Billy knew that Eddie had just spiked a dangerously high fever. He didn’t know how he knew. And he didn’t care.

Soon a teacher—the same one who’d ignored Billy’s plight a few minutes earlier—ran over to help the fallen boy. He didn’t look up at Billy, didn’t seem to realize he was even standing there.

Billy watched as he gripped the Bow tightly. His smile took on a hard edge.

He was done with keeping his head down.

He was done with being afraid.

Billy spun on his heel. Bow in hand, he marched down the hallway, the sounds of Eddie’s feverish whimpers a sweet harmony to his ears.

Chapter 9

Billy Had Never . . .

. . . felt so confident, not even those times as a kid when he’d hit the baseball that Gramps so patiently threw. Seeing the great and powerful Eddie Glass reduced to a vomiting mass of flesh had been a wakeup call.

And Billy intended never to go back to sleep, not as long as he had the Bow.

Head high, white forelock dangling over his eye, he walked past the locker room and headed for the main gym doors. He was late for PE, but that didn’t matter. The handful of stray students rushing to class ignored him, as did the vice principal, who usually had a gimlet eye for anyone not tucked inside a classroom after the bell rang. A small part of Billy’s mind noticed this and thought it odd—the vice principal lived for assigning detention—but the rest of Billy, the newly confident part of him that wielded the Bow, merely shrugged this aside. Of
course
he wasn’t noticed. Only the Horsemen could see the White Rider.

He thought fleetingly of a girl in red, a girl who spoke lovingly of rage and told him that soon enough, his anger would claw its way free. Was she a Horseman too? Billy felt the answer was yes. He didn’t know the girl, and yet part of him did—he saw her standing over him in the alley behind Dawson’s Pizza, offering him a hand, and just beyond that, like an afterimage, he saw her on a red horse, one hand hefting a sword high as they galloped through the sky, leaving bloody trails in their wake.

But blood wasn’t the province of the Red Rider alone. He knew this, just as he knew the girl in red was War. The White Rider, too, knew of blood. Bronchitis. Pneumonia. Tuberculosis. And so much more. So much to learn. And to teach, oh yes, to show everyone who’d ever hurt him just what he could do now.

Picturing Joe and everyone else doubled over with coughs that left their throats raw, Billy approached the gymnasium. They wouldn’t see him, not even when his arrows pierced their skins. Finally, after years of being tormented by them for no reason he could name, it would be
their
turn to play the victim, their turn to have their stomachs clench and insides twist from nausea. Their turn to be sick with fear. Or, barring that, their turn to be sick, period.

He grinned. The Bow wouldn’t fail him. However many arrows he needed, he’d have. He knew this, just as he’d known how to strike down Eddie. He would storm inside, a soundtrack of righteous fury blaring in his mind as he’d let arrow after arrow fly. He’d take down Joe first and the PE coach right after, and then anyone else who’d ever picked on him or who’d looked the other way instead of extending a hand. Everyone. Billy laughed softly as he reached for the door handle. He would rain sickness down upon them all and watch their diseases blossom. They’d whimper and groan as they lost themselves to fever and chills, and he’d rejoice in their pain.

That thought stopped him cold.

It wasn’t that he wanted to hurt those who’d hurt him for so long—that was nothing more than justice. What froze him in place was the realization that he would
enjoy
hurting them.

He’d be no better than Eddie Glass.

Standing outside of the closed gym doors, he pictured Eddie writhing on the floor next to a pool of his own vomit . . . and then the fallen boy looked up at him, a perverse grin twisting his face. Billy felt the ghost of a booted foot slam into his side, and the breath whooshed out of him as he stumbled backwards. Over the sounds of muffled shouts from behind the doors, he heard Eddie’s soft laughter—laughter that sounded frighteningly like his own from just a moment ago.

No. He loathed Eddie Glass. No way in hell would he become him.

With a cry of disgust, he flung the Bow away. It skittered across the linoleum floor and came to an unceremonious halt by the janitor’s closet.

Thou art the White Rider, William Ballard. Thou art Pestilence, Bringer of Disease.

He clenched his fists. It didn’t matter what Death told him, or showed him, or even what he’d done to him. Billy couldn’t wield the Bow. He
wouldn’t.

On the floor, the black wood seemed to chide him, telling him to finish his tantrum already because there was work to do. Infections to spread. Diseases to riddle healthy minds and bodies. All he had to do was pick up the Bow and throw open the gym doors, and then Pestilence would do the rest.

Billy tore his gaze away.

Had he really thought he was done with being afraid? At least before, all he’d had to fear was the inevitable daily beating, whether physical or verbal or both. He’d never imagined that he’d be afraid of himself.

Nauseated, he made his way to the bathroom and hid in a stall as fourth period ticked by.

When the bell rang, he went to the lunchroom, his hood pulled down low over his face. Once he got his lunch he sat near the door, alone, numbly eating a PB&J. At the far end of the table, other kids clustered—losers like Billy, wimps who Kept Their Heads Down and took pains to be one another’s shadow. Billy could have told them that numbers don’t stop bullies if they’ve got you in their sights. He’d learned that lesson back in elementary school, when he’d still had a smattering of people he called friends. Then came the day that Eddie transformed from Just Mean to Mean and Pushy, and Billy wound up eating dirt. He did what he’d been taught and told a teacher, who did nothing about it because she hadn’t seen Eddie shove Billy. Eddie promptly labeled him a tattler. When it became clear that Billy would be the local punching bag for the near future, his friends peeled away like dead skin until only Marianne remained.

Billy Ballard, you were a hero today.

His shoulders sagged. A hero. Yeah, right. What would Marianne say about what he’d done to Eddie? About what he’d been about to do to his entire PE class? He wasn’t a hero. Heroes didn’t fire a weapon at unarmed teens. And if they did, heroes certainly didn’t enjoy it.

Oh, how he’d enjoyed watching Eddie puke all over the floor and then whine like a kicked puppy.

With a sigh, he lifted his carton of milk and drank. He wondered if anyone would see the Bow lying on the hallway floor. Maybe their eyes would slide over it as if it were invisible. Or maybe someone would pick it up, and then Billy would be off the hook—the mantle of the White Rider would fall to that new person, someone better suited for the role. But as he took another bite of a sandwich he couldn’t taste, he understood that no one would be able to wield the Bow but him.

Him, and the Ice Cream Man.

“He’s fallen down on the job,” Death said. “It’s up to you to pick up the slack. Or, if you’d rather, you can convince him to get out of bed. Either way works for me.”

Billy had to talk to Death. He needed help, needed information.
Pestilence for Dummies
, maybe. Something. Anything. He couldn’t do this alone.

From behind him, a maliciously gleeful voice said, “Hey, look! It’s Birdy! How you doing, Birdy?”

Billy stiffened. His heartbeat slammed into overdrive as Kurt brayed laughter.

Another voice said, “Missed you in PE.” That was Joe, leaning down now so that Billy could smell the mint gum of his breath. “Hear you got you a new look.”

Go away,
Billy wanted to shout, but his mouth had locked around his bite of sandwich. His head suddenly ached where Joe had slammed it into the locker door yesterday, or maybe it was the spot that Death had touched, hidden beneath his white patch. His stomach cramped in anticipation of pain yet to come. He screamed silently, the words muted by peanut butter and fear:
Leave me alone!