Socket 3 - The Legend of Socket Greeny (16 page)

Streeter never spoke about his parents again,
at least not until we were older. He didn’t know how to deal with
it, except ignore it.

Chute was different.

“
You like that?” I say.

Chute is in the gift shop. We’re in sixth
grade, on a field trip. She’s looking at a plastic recorder
instrument, something we had to play in grade school to learn
music. We hated it and swore we’d never play it, again. But there
she was, stroking the holes.

“
I was just remembering that my mom liked
it,” she says. “She used to dance with my sister when I
played.”

“
She danced to Hot Cross Buns?”

“
It didn’t matter what I played.”

When she’s not looking, I buy it and give it
to her on the bus. She doesn’t say much. Later, she plays a song
and Streeter and I dance.

Chute’s emptiness was open and hurtful, but
unlike Streeter, she let it be there. She let it be part of her. It
felt like falling in a hole that had no bottom, but Chute let that
happen because she didn’t want to forget her mother, no matter how
much it hurt. I didn’t understand that, not then.

I’d known death and loss forever. Was that
why we were so close?

We wait at the bus stop. It’s the first day
of school. Streeter’s gramma comes out with a camera and takes the
picture that Chute still has on her wall. And there, lurking in the
back, the familiar presence. The presence I had known all my life.
Something inseparable from my life, something I didn’t even notice.
Someone was always there.

Watching.

Pivot. He was the blur in the picture.
Watching, guiding, following. Building his plan, making sure I felt
human. I remembered how it felt to be human. I remembered pain, I
knew death and joy and love.

Always there.

“GODDAMN YOU!” My rage burst in a seismic
wave, uprooting every plant within miles, tossing boulders in the
air and flipping cacti headfirst into the sand. I couldn’t feel
Pivot, he was no longer in the desert. I stretched my presence for
miles, felt all the way back to the shipwreck. The ship was gone. I
extended my influence farther, but he was gone.

Was any of it real? Did he manipulate
everything so that I would be friends with the right people, have
the despondent mother and the brainy friend and the girlfriend I
would fall in love with so that I experienced sadness and joy and
loss and fullness, so that his creation would appear human enough
to trap Fetter? Is that what my life was, a fucking game?

Pain defines us. Reminds us we’re human.

Pike told me that. He knew about papa Pivot.
He knew this day was coming. How could he? And what else did he
know?

I stopped walking. Without my footsteps, the
desert was dead silent. Destruction lay all around. The plants
would soon dry out. Insects would be buried. I put things back in
order, moving everything within my connected presence. The desert
reassembled itself before me. It would live again, just as it had
before I froze time. No one would even notice I walked through the
desert. I would be invisible; the only proof would be the string of
my existence on the fabric of time.

Space and time are inseparable.

And if I can manipulate time, I can
manipulate space.

I closed my eyes, spreading out to the far
reaches of the desert, to the foot of the mountains many miles
away. Every molecule, each atom, resonated with my being. I was a
body, but was inseparable from the essence of life. And if I
wished, if I willed it to be so, I could transfer my body through
the atoms of space to the outer reaches of my influence,
transferring my physical existence like a sound wave passes through
air, like a wave rolls across the ocean.

My body seemed less solid, the barrier of my
skin becoming gray and fuzzy as it dissolved into the atoms.
Thinner I became until my awareness blew in the atmosphere like a
dust cloud. I floated with the cloud of my body, all the way to the
foot of the mountain range where the dust cloud of my atoms
reassembled and condensed. My organs solidified and my skin
tightened.

I opened my eyes.

The shadow of the mountain fell over me. I’d
traversed several miles within seconds.

I expanded outward, again, pushing through
the solid mountains, connecting with the inner core of sand and
miniscule algae and delicate lichens, past the reaches of the
desert into the town on the other side where I merged with houses
and cars and people, absorbing their memories and desires and
worries.

I can go anywhere. Be anything.

Pike was calling me, I could feel it.

I closed my eyes, felt the dissolution of my
body. Somehow I knew I would find him in South Carolina.

* * * * *

Your entire life may prepare you for one
moment,

a single second in time that means
everything.

When that moment arrives, will you be
there?

Pivot

Let go over a cliff, die completely, and
then come back to life.

After that you cannot be deceived.

Buddhist proverb

I have seen the beginning and end of the
universe.

Do you want the answer?

Pick up a cup and drink from it.

Do so purely, without thought.

That is the face of God.

Socket

* * * * *

South Carolina was a thousand miles away.

I crossed the land, one enormous leap at a
time. Cars that were once speeding along were frozen to the
concrete like a wax museum. The passengers appeared to be singing
or facially numb with boredom.

I crossed through Kentucky and Tennessee,
stopping often to admire the countryside and the horses in their
gated land, lips to the turf. I floated over the top of the Smokey
Mountains, walking along the curving Interstate, towing the dashed
line between massive trucks and tiny cars. I stepped off the Blue
Ridge Mountains and dissolved before hitting the trees, merging
with the green foliage and crumbled bedrock.

I walked through Columbia. My heart was
barely thumping anymore. By the time I reached Charleston, it
started to hum.

I needed to find Pike.

My physical expansion spread out over the
Lowcountry of South Carolina, reaching into the outer limits of
Charleston, merging with the wetlands and egrets and brackish
water. I focused, feeling everything in existence between my body
and my destination and, with a thought, relaxed into the ether and
felt my body dissolve one more time.

I came together in front of the high school.
The front doors were open, students were frozen in mid-stride.
School was out.

I solidified inside the grassy circle of the
turnabout where buses were lined up. Three flagpoles were behind
me. The flags were swept in a non-existent breeze, as if molded
from bronze.

The sun was partially obscured by broken
clouds. There was no way to measure the amount of time I spent in
the timeslice, but I had grown accustomed to the sound of my breath
and footsteps, absent was the sounds of daily living.
Did I even
need to breathe?

Slowly, the fragrance of grass and the sounds
of people intensified as I returned to normal time and molecules
began to drift. The flags snapped overhead and the first bus in
line began to creep ahead. Shouts and playful screaming started
slow and came to full speed as my body synchronized with Earth’s
regular time and those that lived in it.

Hundreds of students fled for freedom, racing
into the parking lots, their thoughts a random collage of desires
and fears, locked into their identities of geeks or jocks or queens
or studs, gearheads, burners, gamers or flamers. I felt their lungs
expand and vocal chords vibrate. I absorbed their concerns about
parties and clubs, who was doing what and who was dating who. I was
a distant shadow that tasted their experiences and absorbed the
essence that was their life.

The natural tendency to steal their essence
was suddenly repulsive. I may not be human, but I wouldn’t become
Fetter. I had to stop.

In the mix of it all, a pair of girls came
out to the flagpoles and began winding down the flags. Shannon
Quigley and Stacy Parker, they’d been best friends since second
grade, spending the night with each other almost every weekend.
Right now, Stacy wanted Charlie Nelson to ask her to prom and
Shannon was secretly jealous, hoping he wouldn’t but telling Stacy
something supportive because that’s what best friends do. But if
she got a date—

I snapped back. I was already siphoning their
essence again, along with their thoughts and memories.

They lowered the flags, not a foot away from
me. They didn’t notice me or my shadow next to theirs. They were
folding the flags and on the topic of homework when I felt Chute.
She was on the second floor, coming down the steps with two
friends, holding her books to her chest. She slowed down as she
approached the bottleneck at the front doors, past the security
guards.

There she is.

She lit up the yard like another sun, her
essence beaming brightly, sinking warmly into my chest. My fading
heartbeat quickened, as if remembering what it once was.

She laughed at something Suzy Keller on her
left said, then looked at Jonie White on her right. Chute’s
ponytail whipped from one shoulder to the next. They stopped at the
curb and looked both directions. The buses were loaded and gone.
Cars honked and Denny Stillbee hung out the window of his car.
Chute and the girls laughed. I felt her joy inside me. And as the
yard cleared, I watched her walk with her friends to the parking
lot. Suzy was going to take her home. Cars passed between us. She
was almost out of sight. I was going to let her go. But then she
stopped.

My chest thumped.

She tipped her head, unsure of what she saw.
It was what she felt that made her turn around and look. She shaded
her eyes, searching. I don’t remember becoming visible, but somehow
she saw me. She called over her shoulder to Suzy to hang on a
second, she’d be right back. When she crossed the roundabout road,
she ran.

She jumped into my arms. I tightened, afraid
she would see me for what I was. But her essence was so
intoxicating; I forgot for an instant that my world had
imploded.

“Are you picking me up?” she asked.

I put her down and she grabbed my hand. I
backed up but she pulled my hand to her. It must’ve been the look
on my face that changed the energetic colors around her. Her
essence suddenly contracted and soured.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

I lightly jerked my hand from her grip,
hiding the new fingers behind my back like it was all the evidence
she needed. The slashing weapon. Fingers falling.

LIAR.

I backed up a step.

“Why are you acting so weird?” she asked.
“Did I do something?”

“No.” I took her with my other hand. “You
didn’t do… everything’s all right. I’m just a little tired, that’s
all.”

“Well, what’re you doing here?”

“I just wanted to see you. And talk to
Streeter.”

“He’s in the virtualmode lab, as usual.” She
pointed at the front doors. “You’ll have to call him, security
won’t let you back in the school.”

Amanda Flenner shouted at Chute, said
something about leading the student cabinet meeting next week.
Chute hollered back. Her complexion was so fair, the freckles
highlighted on her smooth cheeks. The skin crinkled between her
eyes when she laughed.

She reached out without turning while talking
to Amanda and hooked her finger with mine. I stared at our hands,
recalling the vision of when we were older.
Not all visions come
true.

“So, are you taking me to the Garrison?” she
said, swinging our hands back and forth.

“What?”

“I’m going to play tagghet with the kids
today, remember? Spindle was going to pick me up at my house, he
didn’t think you’d be back yet.” She shrugged, girlishly. “I’m so
happy you’re back.”

“I, uh, no I forgot. I’m sorry, I just went
through a lot today, there’s a lot on my mind.”

“Did your meeting go bad?”

“It wasn’t good.”

“I’m sorry. Maybe we can go out and cheer you
up. I was talking to Janette and she wants the four of us to go
out. We could do it tomorrow!”

Suzy pulled through the roundabout and
honked, looked at Chute strangely and said, “What’re you doing,
talking to flagpoles?”

“Oh, that’s not nice,” Chute said, not
getting it.

“I got to go, I don’t want to be late,” she
said. “Will you be at the Garrison later? I want to play with the
grimmets and they’re always more fun when you’re around.”

“Maybe,” I said.

She kissed me on the corner of my mouth and
frowned. “Are you sure you’re all right? You’re so cold.”

I nodded and kissed her back.

Then watched her go.

It hurt when she left. The beating faded in
my chest. The hum grew louder.

“I just need to go to the office, man.” It
was Jake Studard, starting left tackle for the football team. He
was trying to shoulder his way past the security guard. “Just call
the coach, he’ll explain.”

“You call the coach.” The security guard
played the same position ten years earlier, now he had three kids
and a wife and a bit of a drinking problem. He wasn’t budging. “It
ain’t my problem. Once you’re out of the building, you stay
out.”

The security guard hooked his thumb in his
belt. I slipped past him just as he stopped Meg Chansey with the
crazy idea she could get back inside because she was class
president.

The hallways were mostly empty. A few
students hanging out at their lockers and a small group of teachers
were outside the office. The essence of their experiences drifted
into me, charging the hum in my chest. The three of them looked
around like a ghost just passed.