The Fading (7 page)

‘No, you wouldn’t. You were just knee-high to a god-damned grasshopper when you walked out in that road.’ A pair of dark but
still blurry shoes propped on Mr Hendren’s desk. Behind them, pants, and now a white t-shirt with dark blotches of something
on it. ‘Ah, hell, it wasn’t your fault, I guess. Wasn’t even Ronald Lee’s fault, I see that now. If I was to blame anyone,
it should be that fucking willow tree. If that hadn’t a-stopped me, I mighta plowed into that fucking house and eaten the
sofa … well, your mom remembers me, I’ll bet. Pretty little gal, she was. But she can’t help you anymore than she helped me,
kiddo. That’s the sad fuckin’ truth.’

‘I love my parents,’ Noel said, defensive but scared. He didn’t understand who this man was or what he wanted.

‘I know you do, Noel. Your parents are good yolks.
But they ain’t here now, so it’s all up to you today, isn’t that about the tits?’

‘I guess so.’

‘But you’re not alone in this. No, sir, my friend. Because Anthony Sobretti, the Italian Torpedo from Toledo, is here and
he understands everything.’

Noel wiped his nose and stepped out of the closet. A smear of small white teeth smiled at him from the shadow at the desk.
‘You do?’

‘Of course I do,’ Mr Sobretti continued, the smaller, darker potato on his shoulder wobbling a bit. ‘Been in a few jams myself,
just like this one you find yourself in today. Now, are we in agreement that you need to get out of here before the clock
strikes twelve fifty-five and all the boys and girls come back inside?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And we understand now that a taxi cab, while a nice idea for someone in a pinch, isn’t going to do jack-squat for you?’

‘I know. It was a stupid idea.’

‘Not at all. In fact, you got it half right! The taxi is a no-go, but the money. The
money
, Noel. That was brilliant. Long green is my specialty, see? Money won’t fix everything, at least not today, but you would
be surprised at the things money can buy once you’re all grown up out there in the world. Money is always nice. So, grab what
you can and let’s hit the fuckin’ bricks.’

Noel turned back for the money but, as before, his hand stopped a few inches above the bills and he felt a quiver of sickness
inside.

‘What’s the matter? Don’t you want it?’

‘But if I can’t take a taxi … or check into a hotel or go to the arcade, what do I need it for? Why do I have to take it?’

Mr Sobretti chuckled. ‘My friend, you don’t have to take a friggin’ thing. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to
do,
capiche
?’

Relieved, he began to shuffle away from the closet.

‘Hold your horses, shortstack.’ Mr Sobretti leaned forward in the chair. ‘I am afraid you’re looking at this situation the
wrong way.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, just because you can’t do anything with the money now, while you are hidden away from the rest of the world in your
special bubble – excuse me, inside your special powers – that doesn’t mean you won’t be able to use it later, does it?’

Noel blinked a few times.

‘Think of it this way,’ Mr Sobretti said, and shot out from his chair until he was standing at the edge of the desk just a
few feet away. It wasn’t a Mr Potato Head. It was part of his broken head and it made Noel look down in shame and revulsion.
‘The things you are able to do with your powers can make your life so much the better when you
don’t
have your powers. Today’s money, which is really just some extra change from the bottom of a few purses, doled out by impatient
mothers for children who chew too many pencils, could be tomorrow’s new Nerf football. After all, they—’ and here Mr Sobretti
jerked his thumb toward the windows, beyond which was the
playground, ‘—took your football away and your mother might be, excuse me, A BIT FUCKIN’ PEEVED IF YOU DON’T REPLACE IT! Now,
am I right or am I white?’

She stole it in the first place, Noel thought but did not say. From my dad’s store.

‘But who needs a Nerf football? What if some day, some day in the very near future, you need a new bike? What if you want
a new pair of hi-tops, like Dean Boettcher has? Wouldn’t it be nice to go to the movies anytime you wanted? And candy bars
and sodas from the 7-Eleven on the way home from school? What if when you grow up you turn out to be an ugly old greaseball
like Poppa S and the girls, they don’t like you so much, see, and maybe you wanna go out and get yourself a real nice hoor?
No? Okay, look. It doesn’t matter what you decide to do with the coin. My point is that winter is coming and you are still
a young squirrel. If you don’t start saving some acorns for when the weather turns nasty – and it
is
going to turn nasty, I assure you, Noel, because our secret can’t and won’t stay a secret forever – you might find yourself
shut out in the cold. Alone. Starving down to your ribs and veins. With no mom and no dad and no friends to help you. When
that happens, you will look back on today, on this moment, and you will be very sorry you didn’t prepare yourself.’

Noel was too frightened by this vision of the future to speak. He wanted to say no, no, please, it won’t be like that. He
wanted to make Mr Sobretti tell him things
would get better, not worse. He opened his mouth as two pools of tears filled his eyes –and the lunch bell went
bbbbbrrrrraaaannnnnggggg!
shattering the quiet of Mr Hendren’s classroom.

Mr Sobretti stared at Noel and Noel stared at the old man’s separated head shapes. No words were spoken but it felt like Mr
Sobretti was shouting at him. And then he did shout, but it was only one word, spoken under the bell’s quieting echo.

‘HURRY!’

Noel turned and raked the cigar box clean.

‘Noel? Noel. Wake up, pumpkin.’

His body was stiff, his stomach hollow. His mom was patting his leg. He sat up on his elbows, confused. Full dark outside
his bedroom window. He barely remembered coming home. Crawling into bed to hide. Missing dinner, his dad at work, his mom
somewhere else, the house silent until he had fallen asleep as the sun set. He couldn’t remember leaving the bubble, but he
saw by the look in her eyes – that she could see him at all – he was normal again. It must have lasted six hours or more …

She looked stunned by something. Her eyes were unfocused and she smelled like apple cider, her clothes like smoke. She must
have gotten a call from the school.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘You have nothing to be sorry for, sweetie. Don’t ever apologize for things like today. It’s not your fault. Don’t you know
that by now?’

When he didn’t answer, she looked to his window, as if she were trying to see something hidden there.

‘Do you think your momma’s crazy?’ she said, not meeting his eyes.

‘No. Course not.’

‘Can I tell you a secret, Noeller Coaster?’

‘Okay.’

‘Your daddy thinks I am. Maybe not all the way, but enough.’

‘Why?’

Her eyes focused. She was seeing all the way into him. He was sure she knew all about the money he’d stolen and he was almost
relieved. Her voice was careful and hushed with frightened wonder.

‘Where do you go? Hm, my boy? Where do you go? What do you do?’

‘Nowhere,’ he said, embarrassed and afraid.

‘Yeeeessss. Always going away. Where no one can find you.’

‘I’m here.’ Noel swallowed, closing his eyes. ‘You just can’t see me when it happens. No one can.’

‘I know. Oh, how I know.’ She sighed. ‘Is it scary for you? That’s been my worry. Ever since you were a baby. I get so scared
for you, Noel, you can’t imagine.’

‘No. It’s okay, Mom. I promise.’ A tear rolled down his face and fell in silence to his blanket.

She reached out and touched his cheek, rubbing below his eye with her cold thumb. ‘You’re a miracle. A beautiful miracle boy.
Don’t you ever forget that.’

Noel swallowed and nodded.

She closed her eyes and patted her chest. ‘I can’t help you, can I? There’s nothing I can do about it. I know that now. So
many nights I tried to think of a way to stop … not like there’s someone to call … they would ruin us.’ But she couldn’t finish,
only shook her head. ‘I’m so sorry, baby. I wish I could take it away. I wish I could go back …’ She covered her mouth, unable
to speak.

‘What should I do, Mom?’ He sat up, scooting toward her. ‘What am I supposed to do?’

‘Don’t let them catch you!’ she whispered, clutching him fiercely. ‘Never give in and let them win. When you find yourself
alone, in trouble, you do whatever it takes to protect yourself. You fight. There are no rules in that time. You are the only
thing that matters. Whatever happens, whatever you have to do, I will never blame you or be mad at you. I will always be your
mommy, no matter what. Understand?’

He nodded, fascinated. All this time he assumed she didn’t know.

‘And don’t tell anybody, Noel. Nobody can know, not ever. It will be our secret, no one else’s. You can’t trust anybody with
it. Police. Teachers. Not girls when you are older. Not even your best friend. There’s monsters out there.’ She placed her
hand over her chest. ‘And in here too.’

‘But how I am supposed to—’

‘We just have to get by,’ she cut him off. ‘One day at a time.’

‘Do I have to go back to school?’ he said.

His mom studied him, then laughed. ‘Do you want to?’

‘I hate it.’

‘Then you can stay home with me. I will teach you and we’ll have more fun, won’t we?’

He smiled at how easy this was, then frowned. ‘But what about Dad?’

‘You let me worry about your father. He’s a man, and like lots of men he deals with things by pretending they aren’t there.
He’s not as strong as you or me and he’s afraid of what will happen if he sees the truth. He doesn’t understand, but maybe
… maybe someday he will. And if he doesn’t, that’s his problem, not ours, okay?’

Noel nodded, but he didn’t think she understood how serious it was.

His mother leaned across the bed and held him tight. ‘I love you so much. So so much.’

‘I love you too, Mom.’

She rose unsteadily from his bed. At the door, when she paused and looked back at him, he did not like the way she was grinning.
Like an enchanted girl in a fairy tale, not any way a mom was supposed to look.

‘What’s it like, Noel? What’s it like to disappear?’

He couldn’t find the words, so instead he slipped off his bed and reached under the frame. He pulled a shoe-box out and opened
the lid. Inside was a leather pouch for his marbles. He emptied it of the money and held up the rolled bills and coins, an
offering and a confession.

His mom’s eyes went wide. ‘Where did you—’

‘I took it from the store. In Mr Hendren’s class.’

‘Where they sell the pencils and stuff?’ She was staring at the money, not him.

He nodded.

‘Why?’

‘Mr Sobretti told me to. He said I might need it.’

Noel’s mother jerked back a step. She looked at him quickly, then away, as if she were embarrassed, or afraid. Her hand was
at her chin, scratching her throat.

‘Keep it,’ she said, backing away. ‘You deserve it. You deserve the whole world, baby. And I’m so sorry I can’t give it to
you.’

She closed the door and padded quickly away.

Noel leaned back on his pillows, thinking about how Mr Sobretti had been right. His parents couldn’t help him. He was going
to have to be careful, and smart, and take what he could so that one day in the future when things got hard and he was on
his own, he would be able to survive.

He fell asleep to the gentle murmur of her crying sounds reaching through the walls, long after he’d given up waiting for
the heavy chime of his father’s key ring dropping on the table by the front door.

Noel was in the garage looking for something more to pawn when he noticed the gasoline can by the lawn-mower and decided to
burn his father’s house down. The can was only about a third full but there was enough to soak a good patch of carpet. The
fumes would fill a room and he could use one of the matchbooks piled high in the oversized wine glass on the hearth – apparently
Happy John and his new fiancée Lisa had been to a lot of bars and restaurants and hotels and fancy places in the past few
years – and there’d be a helluva boom.

Noel had come to the house in Westminster eight weekdays in a row and there was nothing left for him. He’d eaten all the good
food. He’d emptied the change jar on the dresser of its silver. The checkbooks were of no use beyond ordering a couple pizzas,
but last time he did that the Domino’s guy had scoffed. He couldn’t pass them at a bank and there was no real money hidden
in the house. After the power tools and the antique radio and the box of cheap jewelry, there was nothing more he could steal,
at least not by carrying it home strapped to the back of his motorcycle.

The Honda was parked two blocks away at the clubhouse, chained to a fence post. Someone in the homeowners’ association might
remember that, but Noel doubted it. You wouldn’t automatically connect a motorcycle with a fourteen-year-old kid, even if
that kid was, as his last family counselor had said to Rebecca, fourteen going on eighteen. And anyway, who cared if he got
caught? What would his dad do? Send him to juvie hall? Military school? None of those places could keep him.

He carried the metal can back into the kitchen and set it on the counter. He was thinking rags, he was thinking Molotov. He
looked under the sink. There was a green bucket with rubber gloves, a tile brush, sponges – and some scraps of Happy John’s
discarded t-shirts. Noel placed a handful beside the fuel. He unscrewed the steel nozzle and bunched a scrap of rag into the
hole, but it fell through, into the gas.

‘Shit.’

‘What are you doing?’

Noel turned. A girl was standing on the other side of the kitchen, near the hall with the coat rack. She looked younger than
him, which meant they were probably close to the same age. She was short and thin with black hair bobbed like half the girls
wore it at the last school Noel had attended before giving up again. The strap of her book bag cut diagonally across her chest,
between the slightest of dual rises. The bag was Army Surplus but the rest of her was name brand, and she looked like the
kind of girl who could evolve either way. Punk, prep, rat, rocker, athletically sexless. He couldn’t help
staring at her, morphing her through costumes, his own leanings still undefined. Her eyes shone with a fearless frigid intensity.