Rivals (11 page)

Weathers
shrugged. “You didn’t ask them to do it. I did. I thought the hazmat suits
would be enough to protect them, but I was wrong. Whatever that green fire
stuff is, it kills anyone it comes into contact with. Except you and your
sister. You want to hear some more interesting facts?”

Brent stared
at Weathers through his fingers. He wasn’t sure how to answer that question.
“Okay,” he tried.

“We’re pretty
sure the thing, the cylinder you found, was buried for at least sixty thousand
years. They did radiocarbon dating on it and that’s the farthest back that
particular test can go. Which means human beings didn’t build it. Sixty
thousand years ago human beings were still figuring out how to make bows and
arrows.”

“So it’s a
crashed alien spacecraft?”

“Sure,”
Weathers said. “Maybe. Those are the facts. You want some more, well, all I
have are theories. Which means I can’t prove any of it. Now as for what that
green fire is, I don’t have the foggiest notion. All I know is that it heals
you if you’re exposed to it—you said it healed Maggie’s blisters and your
razorburn—so maybe it was an automatic medical station or something.”

“But it’s killed
three people!”

“Three people,
yes, all of them over age eighteen. I have a bunch of scientists trying to
figure out why teenagers come out of there stronger than when they went in.
The best thing they can think of is that it must have something to do with your
pineal gland. That’s a little pinecone-shaped thing in the middle of your
brain. It produces melatonin, or at least, it does until you finish puberty.”

“Then what
does it do?”

Weathers
scratched his left eyebrow. “Then it turns into a lump of bone that does
absolutely nothing. By the time you’re twenty-one it’s completely calcified.
Nobody’s exactly sure why it does that. Nor do we have any idea how an active
pineal gland protected you and your sister from certain death. Again, I don’t have
answers. In this case I don’t even have a theory.”

Brent nodded.
He squirmed in his chair. He didn’t want to know any of this. He really
didn’t want to know about the two men who died trying to recover his dad’s
body.

“You won’t
send anyone else in there, will you?” he asked.

“Oh, no!”
Weathers let go of a bitter laugh. “Hell, no. I’ve got a call in for every
available ton of quick-setting concrete in the state. I’m going to cover that
thing over until it looks like a big parking lot. A parking lot no one will
ever again be allowed to set foot on.”

Brent squinted
at him. “No way. I thought you would want to study it. Take it to pieces and
figure out how it works. Isn’t that what you do with UFOs?”

Weathers
looked at him for a while before replying. Just looked at him. “You may be
under the impression that the government is one big conspiracy. That we’re
always scheming and plotting away behind the scenes. But that’s not who we
are. We’re just people. People who work very hard, for not much pay, to try
to protect American citizens. We’ll make sure nobody else dies, Brent.
That’s
my job.”

School was
becoming a hassle. Brent couldn’t ride the bus anymore—reporters kept
trying to sneak onboard, for one thing. For another he had to keep an eye on
Matt Perkins. He had to walk over to Perkins’ house every morning before Matt
even left for school, and at the end of the day he had to follow the bully all
the way home. Occasionally the kid’s abusive dad came out onto the porch and
yelled at Brent to leave his son alone, but really, there was no option. The
very next day after Brent’s original confrontation with the bully, Perkins had
tried to shake down Ryan Digby again. The only way to stop that was to always
be there whenever the two of them met.

“I don’t think
I can do this forever,” he told Lucy. She had started patrolling with him,
usually while riding on his back. It was nice at least not to be alone when he
rambled all over town like this. They were walking home from school along a
busy side street, just off the highway. A news van with a satellite dish on
top was crawling along behind them, holding up a lane of traffic, and he had to
raise his voice over all the honking horns. “And anyway, he’s just one bully.
There are others out there and I’m not doing anything about them. A lot of
freshman have been leaving notes in my locker asking me for help—but I
can’t be in two places at once. If only Maggie was still around she could help
me.”

“You’re
kidding, right?” Lucy asked, leaning her head over his shoulder. “She would
probably organize the bullies and hold the whole school up for protection
money.”

“Hey!” he
said. “She’s still my sister.”

But he was
getting used to it, unfortunately. Nobody believed in Maggie anymore. Nobody
wanted to give her a second chance. The newspapers had been merciless after
she destroyed the Hunt house. They claimed that she had been trying to kill
Mandy. It didn’t help that Mandy seemed to think so too, and had told every
reporter she could find just how awful her ordeal had been.

The police
were pretty clear on the fact that they were going to arrest her as soon as
they found her. Weathers had said there was nothing he could do. But Brent
knew there was still some good in her. Before Mom had died she had been a
pretty cool sister. Even afterwards she had always looked after him. She had
saved him from the green fire—didn’t that count for anything?

“If I could
just talk to her,” he started, but even to himself he felt like a scratched CD
skipping over the same line over and over again. “Maybe, then—”

He stopped
because he saw two girls standing at the street corner ahead. It was Jill
Hennessey and Dana Kravitz, and it looked like they were having an argument.
Or at least—Jill was having an argument, and Dana was just agreeing with
everything she said, her head bowed as if she deserved whatever nasty things
Jill had to say. Jill was holding on tight to Dana’s arm and Brent wondered if
he should intervene.

But
no—that wasn’t right. That wasn’t what he was supposed to be doing. Dad
wouldn’t have wanted him to intrude on everyone’s personal lives, he was pretty
sure. “When I saved Mandy Hunt I didn’t have to think about it,” he told Lucy.
“I didn’t have to wonder whether I was doing the right thing. I didn’t have
to calculate what would happen every time I broke through a wall or kicked a
pile of bricks out of the way. I just did it. If every problem was so
clear-cut this would be so much easier!”

“But they
can’t be, Brent. The world is complicated, and that’s why heroes are so rare.
Superheroes have to make the right decision every time, and—”

“Hold on,” he
said. Something looked wrong. Out of place. There was a line of cars coming
toward them. Dana and Jill had a DON’T WALK light. But they were stepping out
into the street, Jill’s hand on Dana’s back, right between her shoulder blades.

“Jump down,”
he told Lucy, and felt her weight fall off his back. Then he was off like a
shot, sprinting toward the two girls. They weren’t looking where they were
going, and the cars were getting awfully close—

He could see
them perfectly as he ran. It was as if time had slowed down. Jill still had
one foot on the curb. She had turned slightly to face the oncoming traffic and
it looked like she was about to jump back. Dana, on the other hand, was all
the way out in the street and was falling forward, her hands out to catch her.
She was going to land on all fours right in front of the cars.

The car in
front had already slammed on its brakes—the driver saw Dana. But Brent
just didn’t know if it would stop in time or not.

He dashed up
between them, one foot forward sliding across the asphalt. He started turning
sideways before he’d even reached them and momentum took him the rest of the
way. He saw the news van coming up behind him, swerving hard to pass a car
that had stopped short in the middle of the crosswalk. Brent reached out one
hand and pushed Jill, as gently as he could, backward, back onto the sidewalk.
Dana was just about to fall.

He wasted a
fraction of a second thinking about the best way to grab her, the way that
wouldn’t involve touching her anywhere inappropriate. Then, one hand scooping
low under her stomach, the other wrapping around her shoulders, he picked her up
and then kicked hard to launch them both across the street, toward a patch of
green grass that looked like it would soften the impact.

The news van
hit him in the shoulder, hard enough to make him see stars. He twisted around
to take the impact across his back, protecting Dana as the van’s grille buckled
under his weight. The blow knocked him sideways, but only a little, and then
he was falling, rolling, and time sped up again, became a blur—

Then he was
sliding on his back across the grass, Dana on top of him as if she were riding
a sled. They came to a stop just like that, with her lying full length on top
of him, her arms wrapped tightly around his neck.

He was a
fifteen year old boy so he noticed at once how soft her body was, how perfectly
she fit into his arms. He was also Brent Gill so the thought embarrassed him
enough to make him blush.

“How’s my
hair?” Dana whispered. It was the first thing she’d ever said to him.

“It’s
beautiful,” he said, honestly. Then he looked over her shoulder and saw a
portable video camera staring back at him. He tried to smile. Then he tried
to sit up, thinking he would gently roll out from under Dana and get back on
his feet.

Instead she
clutched him hard. He could feel her shaking and he realized she must be terrified—she
could have been killed back there.

“It’s okay,”
he said. “You’re safe now.” There were reporters everywhere, and people with
cell phone cameras, and a man carrying a garden hose—Brent thought it
must be his lawn they’d landed on. It was all happening so fast. He saw Jill
come running up, and Lucy pushing her way through the crowd, her eyes wide.

Slowly,
carefully, he lifted Dana off of him and set her down in the grass. She was
breathing very hard, almost hyperventilating.

The reporters
all started talking at once. “Brent! Brent! Do you have some kind of super
senses, that let you know when danger is near? Brent! How does it feel to
save a pretty girl? Is she your girlfriend? Does Brent have a girlfriend? Is
she going to kiss him anyway? Mr. Gill—could you just look this way and
give us a thumb’s up?”

“Get back!”
Lucy shouted. “Let him breathe!” Then she grabbed the garden hose and put her
thumb over the end so she could spray any reporters who got too close. Soon
she’d cleared a circle maybe twelve feet wide around Brent and Dana. “Get
back, all of you! Give him some room!”

Brent got to
his feet and brushed off his clothes. He was covered in blades of freshly mown
grass. He looked down and saw Dana still sitting there, hugging herself. He
reached down and gave her a hand up.

“I don’t have
a date for homecoming yet,” she blurted out.

He opened his
mouth but he had no idea what to say in reply.

Back at home
Brent and Lucy hid out in his room, with the blinds down and the door locked.
Despite the court order that was supposed to keep reporters away from his house
there were people all over his lawn, some of them with cameras, some just
holding notepads and pens, waiting for something to happen. Waiting for him to
come down and tell them how he felt about saving people.

He’d already
learned they didn’t want to know how he
really
felt. They wanted him to say something like, “All in a day’s work!”
or “Anybody would have done the same.” They didn’t want to hear that he was
struggling to get his homework done or that Grandma still couldn’t get dressed
by herself in the morning.

“Hold still,”
Lucy said. She had a measuring tape in her hands. He lifted her arms and let
her loop it around his chest.

“Are you going
to tell me what that’s about?” he asked, nodding at the tape.

“No. It’s a
surprise.” She smiled up at him, then measured the length of his leg from hip
to ankle.

“I mean, I can
probably guess—”

His cell phone
rang. He sighed and pulled it out of his pocket. Most likely the screen would
say UNKNOWN CALLER or just list some local phone number he wouldn’t recognize.
He’d learned never to answer those calls. Instead, though, this time it said
the call was from Ryan Digby.

He frowned.
Why would the freshman be calling him? How had Ryan even gotten his number?
But it could be trouble. Maybe Matt Perkins was at it again. “Hello?” he
asked, flipping the phone open.

Lucy wrote
some measurements down in her Chemistry notebook, then brought the tape up to
measure around his neck.

“No,” Brent
said. “I’ve got nothing to add.” He held the phone away from his ear. “This
is a new one. A reporter stopped in at Ryan Digby’s house to interview him,
then asked if he could use his phone. He knew I would answer if it was from
Ryan’s number.” He put the phone back to his ear. “What? No. Dana’s not my
girlfriend. No. I don’t have a girlfriend! Well, of course I like girls.
That’s a—that’s a really personal question, but no, I’m fifteen years old
and I’ve never—wait. Wait, I didn’t say—”

He growled and
started to throw the phone at the wall. Then he thought better of it. It
might go right through the wall and hit somebody out in the yard. So instead
he tossed it lightly onto the bed.

“What’s
tomorrow’s headline?” Lucy asked.

“‘Super Kid is
Saving Himself… for Marriage.’” Brent scowled. “Probably. I don’t think they
would run with ‘Brent’s Still a Virgin!’”