Rivals (17 page)

“And if I
refuse to fight her?” Brent asked, fuming. “I’ve got better things to do.”

“Like what?”

Brent looked
up the street. Matt Perkins should be coming along any second now. “There’s a
bully, who picks on the little kids at school. I watch him. I make sure he
doesn’t do anything to hurt anybody. Maybe that won’t save the world. But it
makes life easier for somebody. It makes life better for somebody.”

“Matthew Perkins
was expelled from school yesterday afternoon,” Weathers told Brent. “After the
local police had a chat with your principal. Bullying is a crime. Did you
know that? Perkins’ parents agreed to remove their son from the school in
exchange for a written promise from the school that no charges would be filed.”

Brent stopped
breathing for a second. “You did that?” he asked.

“Like I said,
it was the local police. Who perhaps were acting on information I provided
them. That’s what I’ve been reduced to now—providing information.”

Brent shook
his head. “But that’s a terrible idea. Matt’s life will be ruined. And
anyway, he was only a bully because his father abused him—”

“When the
Perkins family got home,” Weathers went on, “they found a case worker from
Child Protective Services waiting for them. Most likely Matthew will be
removed from his parents’ custody and go live with a foster family.”

Brent rubbed
at his face in frustration. “Oh my God. You broke up an entire family—”

“A
dysfunctional family. You really think Matthew was better off under his
father’s care? You really think that was a good outcome?”

“I don’t know.
It’s not my right to judge people.”

“Nor is it
mine. It’s up to the courts what eventually happens. Because the courts only
exist to judge people. There are institutions in place, Brent, to take care of
the little things. You don’t need to fix all the bullies and bad parents in
the world. Matthew Perkins was a distraction. I took that distraction away.
You’ve got far more important things to do.”

“Like betray
my sister?”

Weathers
touched his forehead as if he were doffing a non-existent hat. “Have a good
day at school. And, hey, kid? Don’t start rebelling just yet. The human race
still needs you.”

He turned
around and walked away, then. Brent roared in frustration, then headed to the
next block where he was meeting Lucy to walk the rest of the way to school
together. “I can’t believe he said that,” he told her, after he’d recounted
what the FBI man had said. “He knew exactly what it would do to me. That was
one of the last things my dad ever said—‘When are you going to start
rebelling’.”

“How could he
know that?” Lucy asked.

Brent shook
his head. “Back when we first came out of the desert—the first time I
met him—he had us tell him everything that had happened before Dad died,
made us repeat every word either of us said. God! I should never have trusted
him. You know what? I should start rebelling. I mean, I’ve got plenty to
rebel against right now. You know what I should do? I should walk into the
convenience store over there and take a pack of gum. And not pay for it. Just
refuse to pay for it no matter what happens.”

Lucy laughed.
“I have some gum right here if you want it,” she told him.

“That’s not
the point! The point is to show the world that I’m not perfect. That they
can’t expect these things from me all the time.”

“Brent, Brent,
Brent—if you tried that, you know what might happen? The owner of the
store might just give you the gum. He would probably assume you needed it for
some totally good reason, like, there was a dam somewhere and it was going to
burst, right, and you needed the gum to seal up the crack.”

“I could tell
him otherwise. I could explain what I was doing.”

“I’ve got a
better idea,” Lucy said. “How about you just take a day off? Blow off a
little steam. There’s a really good old movie on TV tonight, it’s called
Omega
Man
, have you seen it? It stars that guy
who ran the NRA, and it’s about the future when—well, I won’t spoil it, but
we could make some popcorn and you and I could turn off our phones, and just
kick back, and not worry about Maggie, or Matt Perkins or Ryan Digby or
Weathers or your grandma or your dad or—”

“Um.”

She turned and
looked at him. “What?” she asked.

“I kind of…
can’t. I have a date.”

“A date?”

Lucy walked
over to the curb and sat down. Her leg braces clanked on the concrete.

“A date,” she
said. “With Dana Kravitz?”

“Uh, yeah,”
Brent said.

Lucy put her
face in her hands. He wasn’t sure but he thought she was crying.

“Hey! Hey,
Luce, it’s okay,” he said, trying to put an arm around her. She shrugged him
off. “Look, I know, I know—she’s friends with Jill Hennessey, who’s a
total ass, she’s part of the popular clique and I know we’ve never gotten along
with them, but—but Dana actually seems kind of nice, when you get to know
her. I mean, she just wanted to thank me, see, for saving her the other day.
It’s nothing serious. Just dinner, at her family’s house. That’s all.”

She dropped
her hands into her lap and looked up at him. He’d seen the look on her face
before. That night in his bedroom when he’d almost kissed her, she had that
same look of despair and confusion. He had no idea what she was thinking, and
he was afraid to ask.

She dried her
eyes and just breathed for a while. Then she asked, “What shirt are you going
to wear?”

He showed up
at the Kravitz house ten minutes early, because his mom had always taught him
you shouldn’t keep people waiting. He didn’t want to look too eager, though,
so he walked around the block a couple of times before ringing the bell. Then
it occurred to him that someone in the house might have seen him wandering
around and wondered what he was doing.

He was
nervous. Brent wasn’t sure why, exactly, but something about this—this
date—had him all worked up. He was even sweating a little. He pressed
the doorbell again and heard it ring inside the house, but still nobody
answered.

Which just
made him more nervous. What was going on? Maybe something had come up, and
Dana couldn’t have dinner with him tonight, he thought, which would be okay,
honestly. He took out his cell phone and started to dial her number but had
barely got into his phone book when the door opened.

“Hi,” Dana
said.

Brent had no
idea what to say in response.

She was
beautiful. She was always beautiful, even in the casual clothes most kids wore
at school. But now she was wearing a dress, a short black dress with a scoop
neck, and she had just a little makeup on, and her hair was—wow. Her
hair was almost glowing. It fell in dark waves across her cheeks and it swung
from side to side as she turned to look up the street.

“There’s a van
following you,” she said.

Brent spun
around and saw a newsvan creeping up the street toward him. A camera man was
leaning out of the passenger side window, focusing on him.

“You’d better
come inside,” Dana told him.

She lead him
into a foyer full of dark wood furniture. All of it was polished and the glass
and mirrors and brass was shining. He thought of Mandy Hunt’s house, which was
immaculately clean and tastefully decorated but in the end just felt sterile
and unlived-in. This was something else. He felt like he’d stepped back a
century into a more elegant age. Dana’s family had money, he knew that.
Brent’s family didn’t—at the moment, he and Grandma were just scraping by
on money from Dad’s life insurance policy. It was hard not to feel like he’d
come to the wrong house.

“Come on
through. We’re going to eat in the kitchen, if that’s alright. The dining
room’s just not cozy enough.” She turned and smiled at him over her shoulder.
“I hope you’ll like what I made.”

I’m sure I
will
, he thought. And then realized he
hadn’t said anything yet.

“You look
gorgeous,” he said, which sounded stupid when it came out of his mouth. She
gave him another smile, though, and it was warm enough that he felt like he
might get a suntan just from the light coming off her perfect teeth.

She lead him
into the kitchen, which was bigger than he’d expected but at least the
furniture didn’t look like it cost more than his college fund. There was a
simple table with straight-backed chairs. Two plates were already laid out
with silverware and cloth napkins. Too much silverware, it looked like. There
were three forks—what did you need three forks for?

“Aren’t your
parents going to eat with us?” Brent asked, when he’d processed the fact there
were only two plates.

“Oh, no,” she
said, and her eyes were very wide. “You didn’t think—” She recovered
herself. “Brent,” she said, “this is a
date
. They were kind enough to go out for the evening so we could be
alone
.”

“Oh,” he said.

He sat down
and she served him a salad—that was what the first fork was for. The
salad was delicately dressed and full of fresh vegetables. It was at that
point he realized that he wasn’t hungry at all.

“This is
really nice,” he said, and pushed a forkful of microgreens and chopped
mushrooms in his mouth. He chewed with determination. “You really didn’t need
to go to all this trouble, though.”

“It was no
trouble, believe me,” she told him, waving her fork in the air. “We have a
cook who comes in. I gave her an extra twenty dollars this week and she
whipped all this up. Anyway, I really did want to thank you for saving me.
When I was in your arms—”

“I don’t
think,” he said, interrupting her, “that you were in any danger. Really. I
just didn’t want to take the chance.”

She took a
drink of water and studied him across the table. “You would have done it for
anyone, is that how it works? Anybody in trouble? Why is that? What makes
you want to save people? It’s not like they’d do the same for you.” She
shrugged an apology. “Sorry, that’s a weird question, I guess.”

“No,” he said.
“No.” She got up and removed his salad plate—and his fork—and replaced
it with his main course, a salmon filet in a creamy dill sauce. “It’s just…
complicated. I have these powers and I guess I feel I have a responsibility to
use them for… well. For good. My dad, you see—”

—who
I killed—

“—he
would have wanted me to help people. He believed that if you have the ability
to help people, if you’re lucky enough to have something when other people
don’t, then you always should.”
I could have put that better
, he thought.

“I can
understand that,” she told him. “My mom is really into charity. She’s always
throwing parties to raise money for cancer research, or to help homeless
people, or whatever. Of course, what she spends on the parties is sometime
more than she collects for the charities, but I think her heart’s in the right
place.” She smirked. “Parents, huh? They try their best. But you can’t
spend your whole life doing what your parents want.”

“You can’t?”
he asked. He took a bite of the salmon. It really was delicious, he thought,
but in his mouth it felt like indigestible plastic. He’d barely touched the
salad but it was filling up his stomach as if it had expanded in there, making
him dread finding out what the third fork was for.

“No way! My
dad wants me to become a systems analyst. Just like him. Whenever my computer
goes down he says I have to fix it myself, because I need to learn how. But
that’s what techies are for, right? I don’t want to spend the rest of my life
looking at page after page of code. I want to travel and see the world. I
thought maybe I should be an airline hostess. They can travel for free, did
you know that?”

“No,” he said.
He put his fork down on his plate. Dana moved quickly to remove the plate and
replace it with dessert—cheesecake with real strawberries on top. He
picked up the third fork and studied it. It was shorter than the others, and
one of its tines had a sort of claw on the end. He’d never seen anything like
it before in his life.

“I think you
should go to Hollywood,” she told him, her eyes shining. “You could be in the
movies. You’re cute enough, in a scruffy kind of way. If we just fixed your
hair you’d be a knockout.”

He blushed.
“I guess I could do my own stunts.”

“Oh my God,
yeah!” she laughed. “This is really fun, isn’t it? Look, I don’t want this dessert.
It’s just empty calories and who needs those, right? Let’s go in the living
room. Do you want to watch a DVD?”

He stood up
and started picking up the dishes. “I’ll wash if you dry,” he told her.

Dana stared at
him for a second. Then she shook her head. “Don’t worry about it. We have
somebody for that, too. Come on!”

She took him
into a living room full of green leather couches and the biggest plasma TV he’d
ever seen—it filled up half of one wall. She started gathering up remote
controls and pointed, indicating he should sit on one of the couches. He sat
down but before he could get comfortable she was on top of him, shoving in next
to him so there shoulders and thighs touched and her head was lying on his
shoulder.

“Do you
drink?” she asked.

“Not really,”
he told her.

“That’s so
good to hear. My last boyfriend was a total alcoholic. He never saw a keg he
didn’t like. I think you and I are going to get along a lot better. Kiss me.”

Alarm bells
went off in Brent’s head. He felt a drop of sweat roll down the inside of his
shirt collar. “What?”