Rewrite Redemption (6 page)

Score!

I made a mental note—room 217, fourth period. Through the window, I watched the teacher comatizing the class. Kids were yawning, a few had their heads on their desks, and one guy was obviously asleep. For the moment, I was stopped. There was no way I could lock on to anyone specific without wading through the class. I wasn’t about to do that. I needed to keep a low profile. I moved away from the window. I figured I’d wait until the bell and catch people coming out the door. So I just leaned back against the wall and soaked up the calm.

God, it felt good!

It was hard to believe power of that caliber was coming from one person, but then I’d never been around a Shadow before. It felt like an entire aspen grove. It had been days since I’d had any tree juice, and my family had been draining me something fierce. Picking up energy from another Editor was even better than getting it from a tree. I stopped all thinking and just let myself feel.

“Young man, are you lost, or are you just holding up the wall?”

I broke out of my stupor to see the Vice staring at me.

“Sorry, Mr. Lowenstein, I got turned around,” I said, fumbling for an excuse. 

“I gave you directions to English a half hour ago,” he said, glancing at his watch and eyeing me suspiciously. “We have rules here. And wandering the halls is breaking one. Go to class.”

“Yes, sir.” I tried to look compliant, pulling out my schedule and studying it intently. How could thirty minutes have gone by? I started to sink back into the lull of the energy when I realized he was still standing there.

“
Now
, Mr. DeMille,” he said, frowning about a foot from my face.

With the Vice as an escort, I forged on to English. When we reached my class, Lowenstein opened the door, shoved me in, and shut it behind me. Then he stood watching through the window while I handed over my paperwork. I could see by his frown that I’d made a great impression.
Smooth, move, Constantine.

The teacher nodded and pointed me towards a seat in back. The desk was in my favorite spot—far enough away that I could zone out under the radar.
Nice
.

All I could think of was room 217.

I’d been busting ass trying to cultivate the attributes the Guild required before they would remove my travel block. Patience, consequences, adherence to rules, and what was it? Oh yeah, forethought. This was about as good a test for patience as I’d ever had, because every fiber in my body longed to be searching. As for forethought, heck, the only thing I
could
do was think about how things would be different if I could get the Shadow to help me. Wasn’t that forethought?

With a Shadow’s help, my brother would be playing football once more. My parents would be harassing me about cleaning my room. And my room would be back in Seattle….yeah, the one far away from parental interference. I’d have my redwood back and life would be sweet again.

“Dude,” hissed the guy in front of me. He turned and glared at my feet. “Ease up on the Red Bull.”  

It took me a moment, but finally I realized I was tapping my foot on the floor. “Sorry,” I mouthed apologetically.

The guy rolled his eyes and turned around. The blonde across from us snickered. The teacher glanced briefly in our direction but continued talking. I struggled to reign in my exploding excitement.

Waiting was torture.

The second the bell rang, I shot out of the seat, heading for room 217 as fast as I could maneuver through the crowd. The halls were packed and almost immediately, I got road-blocked by a group of girls. Weaving through them, I sprinted for the stairs. I could still feel the power, but it was fading fast. By the time I got there, the room was empty except for the teacher. It definitely wasn’t her. That meant it
had
to be a student.

It was still in the building, but it was dissipating fast. I headed to the caf which seemed like my best bet. But the sheer number of bodies in the crowded lunchroom dampened my radar’s ability to focus. So I snatched a sandwich and some milk and walked back outside to find a tree.

I felt a faint whisper of the energy, but not enough to track. Maybe the source was shielding now, or maybe they were close enough to a tree that their signal was muffled. Still, it had to be a student, and that meant they’d be back in room 217, fourth period…most likely tomorrow. And they’d probably return to school after lunch.

I leaned back against the tree and stuck my earbuds in
.
The tree gave off a little juice. Compared to the source, though, it was like a watered-down latte. No problem. I still felt great from the hit I’d gotten outside room 217.

I ate my sandwich and listened to some tunes. I kept my feelers out for the energy, but no dice. When kids began to stream back inside, I staked out the main entrance, screening everyone who passed. Finally, a minute before the last bell, I gave up and sprinted to class…slightly bummed, but still hopeful.

Suddenly, I felt it somewhere in the distance. I high-fived myself in my head. It was just as I thought—something regular, not a onetime thing, or a fluke. I kept to my schedule, thinking I’d hunt again as soon as school let out. The rest of the afternoon, I struggled to pay attention; but it was a bitch and the hours crawled by. When class finally let out, it seemed like I’d been there for days.

My seventh-period teacher stopped me on the way out of class to hand me a syllabus. That small delay totally screwed me. By the time I made it out the door, I couldn’t sense it anywhere.

There was an outdoor mall a few blocks from the school. I figured I’d give it a shot. I needed to waste some time anyway before I could handle the home scene. I scoured it block by block, coming up empty, not even a twinge.

Eventually, I found a bench for a stakeout and sat there getting my homework out of the way. I waited until the sun began its descent behind the mountains, plunging the temperature ten degrees lower and plunging my hopes along with it. My afternoon was a bust. I stuffed my books in my backpack.

I walked home to My Chemical Romance
—“
Under Pressure.” I’d spent my day all hyped-up, and now I had to go home to depression central. My brain flashed me a preview before I even walked up the steps.

My brother would be zombied to the game controller, oblivious to my mom’s frantic attempts to insert a “positive note” into his tsunami of depression. Dinner would be drying out in the kitchen. My dad would be at the office, waiting until the last possible minute he could justify before returning home to join the death march. My mom would pounce on me the moment I walked in the door and steer me over to break Devon out of his gaming coma. So that we could all eat in morose silence watching the nightly news.

Whoo hoo! Rockin fun.

I walked in the door. No need to elaborate. The preview had been spot-on. After my tour of duty was complete, I escaped to my room. Things were harsh, yeah, but I had hope now. That night, I hacked into the school network and reworked my schedule. I would now have Spanish fourth period. I downloaded the class roster and stuck it in my wallet.

I’d narrow it down the next day in room 217.

I watched Sam lug the box to the trash bin. He didn’t notice me, high in the sky, on my tree house porch. I counted the clinks…two, three, four wine bottles dropping. Next crashed a cascade of beer bottles. He went back inside, taking the box with him. It was empty now…but not for long.

“Sam dumping bottles?” Ipod stuck his head out the tree house door. “Sounded massive.”

“Tell me about it.”

Ipod wore a black tee shirt that said “E=mc2” and a pair of old jeans with big pockets. He was a packrat and the pockets were full of stuff. Normally he ate lunch with us, but today he had violin practice, and he’d just gotten home. Other than passing by me on his way to the fridge two minutes ago, I hadn’t seen him since before school. The fridge was always his first stop.

“Lex told me there was weirdness at school today,” he said, climbing into the hammock with a yogurt and a granola bar.

“Yeah, I felt something…some kind of—I don’t know—energy,” I said, taking off my hoodie and tossing it over the porch rail.

“You always feel energy.”

“Yeah, but this was different.”

 “Describe it,” he said, waving his fingers at me. Ipod has very expressive hands. He uses them a lot when he talks. It’s as if he’s making everything three-dimensional in his mind. The guy is seriously smart, pretty much a walking Wikipedia.

“Well,” I said, “you know how it is for me when I’m away from my tree, right? Especially at school.”

If I’m away from my tree too long, I get this prickly-panicky feeling…like ants crawling under my skin. If I’m gone for a really long time, then my senses just go haywire, and I have to struggle to hold it together. All my nerve endings buzz—total sensory overload.

“You mean the static thing, where your brain goes all carbonated?” he asked, reading the label on the granola bar.

“And the creepy-crawly thing,” I reminded him. “The only place I’m really okay is here in my tree. So, you know how I do the white noise thing, to dampen down the static and keep from whacking out?” I kind of hum in my mind to help me focus and block out all the interference.

He nodded.

“It takes a lot of concentration to do that and walk and talk and whatever at the same time. But if I don’t do it—”

“You get all agitated and twitchy.” He finished my sentence. “Like that time when the Bratz Doll—”

“Don’t remind me, but yeah.”

Nobody could listen like Ipod. He was intensely curious about my strangeness and never got tired of hearing about it. It always helped to talk it out with him, especially since Sam was in denial about the whole thing.

“So what happened today?” he asked, wolfing down the granola bar.

I closed my eyes, reflecting. “It’s funny. Usually by fourth period, I’m pretty drained. I have to really concentrate on managing the sensory input. So there I was in Spanish, doing what I usually do, and all of a sudden the static stopped and the creepy-crawly thing vanished, just like that. I felt this calm feeling wash over me, and—I know it sounds crazy—there was kind of this gentle music in the background. It wasn’t any instrument I recognized. It was more like humming.”

“Humming? That’s interesting.”

“Yeah, right? It was amazing. I heard it all afternoon…just gentle in the background. I kept feeling waves of the good energy. And I didn’t have to buffer what was going on around me. There was no more static the rest of the day. I just felt, well, calm, good, maybe even normal. Not that I have any idea what normal is, but you know what I mean.”

He got his curious face on. I knew he’d spend hours in his head trying to figure it out. He had all kinds of theories about my strangeness. “Has that ever happened before?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“Not even once?”

“No, never. I mean, I’ve gotten pretty good at handling school, but I’m on edge the whole time I’m there. All I can think about is getting home to my tree so I can be okay again. Today was totally different…well, starting in fourth period. I don’t know
what
to think.”

He ripped the top off the yogurt and stirred it for a moment, not saying anything. Then he looked at me and shrugged. “Beats me, A.J. Every effect can be traced back to a cause. There has to be an explanation. Give me some time to think about it. Maybe you’re just moving past your strangeness, growing out of it or something.”

“Maybe. I like the healing thing and all, but the rest of it, not so much. I don’t need any more weirdness.”

 “But this was weirdness in a
good
direction, right?”

“I guess…well, yeah.”

 “So chances are it’s nothing bad. No use freaking out before you have to. Forget about it for now. See if it even happens again. Pay attention. Take notes. We’ll figure it out.”

And then Lex called us in for supper, and I forgot about it for the rest of the evening.