The Orphan (34 page)

Soon as the door closed behind the younger woman in charge, Chad saw the old crone look back and he heard her whisper something.

The old man shuffled over, until he was looming over Raya, and then he kneeled at her side, gazing down at her bare legs.

He wheezed something and started to laugh.

The woman whispered again but it sounded like gibberish, excitement or a warning, he could not tell which. Something urgent. To Chad it sounded like hurry, and that was enough.

Chad stepped off the tumble mat and walked toward them. He kept his hands balled inside his shirt to minimize the bleeding, to muffle the sound of his blood dripping on the floor. He went quietly, slowly, as the woman alternately turned from the window at the double doors to the man leaning over Raya.

It was the longest walk of his life.

On the way, he thought of the first time he saw Raya, on the first day of school last September. He had been walking back from third-period English, on his way to his locker, which was just around the corner from the cafeteria. He didn’t have a girlfriend, not since last spring, and he had never been in love. He put his English textbook away, talked to his locker mate for a minute or two, and then Kennedy slapped him on the back and ran off to gym class. Chad had been hungry and decided to head over to the chow line to grab a bagel before fourth-period chemistry class started. He moved through the throng of students loitering and catching up in the cafeteria, and he saw her back first, her hair pulled into a French braid, which he always liked but didn’t see many girls wearing these days.

The French braid of dark blonde hair, a soft light blue sweater, and the backs of her legs under the table’s bench seat. She was seated alone, leaning forward, reading something. Under the yellow denim skirt, her calve muscles shone with glare from the overhead lights, her skin a soft brown from summer, and she wasn’t wearing socks, just a pair of old-fashioned deep red penny loafers. He didn’t know he was going to talk to her, only that he wanted to see her face. Somehow he knew before he stepped in front of her that she was new here, not any of the girls he knew from the past two years at Boulder High, and he had the craziest idea that if he hurried and got there before anyone else, he would be the very first person to see her here.

Then he was standing on the other side of the table, looking down at her, gawking without realizing it, and the book she was reading said Paris Trout on the cover. For some reason this made him laugh, not because she was reading but because the title sounded funny, Paris striking an exotic chord while Trout rounded it off in a humorous, down-to-earth way, and it sounded like her French braid and her yellow skirt and newness in his brain, on his tongue.

That’s when she’d looked up, hearing his laughter, and her eyebrows came together, and he said the dumbest thing he’d ever said to a girl in his life.

Are you from Paris?
 

She had no idea what he was talking about, but the question made her smile too. And it had been so easy. He said hi, my name’s Chad. Are you new here? And she said yes, and introduced herself, and he asked her more questions, he didn’t know what, because he was fascinated by how she didn’t seem shy or guarded, but nor was she flirting. She was just being nice. She’s a nice girl, he thought. There is no wickedness in her, no deception, and her face was like purity itself. When she smiled he felt like his head was being pumped full of a miraculous gas. They were headed the same way, which turned out to be in the same hall, and then the same room, Chemistry I.

In the classroom she thanked him for introducing himself, very businesslike, and then she walked to her seat, and he was in love, so doomed in love. Raya was the only reason he’d passed that class this year, because he had to stay in it to be closer to her and she helped tutor him, and it took four months of polite friendship before he had the nerve to ask her out, and every day he had come to love her more than the last.

He saw that now, remembered it as clearly as anything in his life, and he relived it for three or four seconds on his way to fix this problem she was in, the situation he would accept not one second more.

Chad was only two or three steps behind the man leaning over Raya when the old woman turned from the doors and saw him. She started to hiss.

Chad ignored her and reached over the old man’s shoulders, his bloody hands sliding over the old man’s ears, until his fingers hooked into the old man’s mouth, inside his cheeks, beside his teeth. The old man clawed at Raya’s shirt, at the same time biting Chad’s fingers. He groaned and shook his head from side to side, but he would not release Raya. Chad dug his fingers into the cheeks, against the jaw.

Raya was staring up at him, over the man’s head, her eyes huge pools of shining life in the dark, and he saw her bare legs on the mattress, and she was saying no, no, no, and he knew she didn’t want him to get hurt.

Chad tensed his chest and arms and ripped both ways until his hands slipped free, and the old man had a mouth three sizes too big after that. He rolled on the floor and covered his face, his breath too high and stolen to scream.

The old man rolled to his hands and knees, pushing himself from the floor. He reached into his boot cuff and came out with a long knife, the metal blade dull silver in the dark. He rose to his feet and pointed the knife at Chad’s heart.

Chad danced to his right like a boxer and then shot forward, down low like he had learned in wrestling practice back in junior high. He caught the old man’s legs and swung them out from under, simultaneously lifting, his shoulders hitting the man in the hips. The blade snagged on his side, along his ribs, and the pain was sharp but brief as Chad lifted the old man up and threw him over his shoulders, dropping him to the floor, onto his head.

The old woman threw herself at Chad and he jumped aside, caught her by the back of her lowered neck and flung her away, using her momentum to send her sprawling to the floor.

The old man pushed himself to his hands and knees once more, breathing hard, coughing, swaying, and this time Chad did not let him make it to his feet. Blood poured from the old man’s mouth and Chad ran at him from five steps away. He punted into the exposed teeth and chin and the head snapped back. The old man flipped onto his back and gurgled out a series of choking sounds.

The old woman came crawling forward stabbing through the air, the curve of her arm with knife in hand a scorpion’s tail, slashing toward Raya. She was grunting and whining and the blade stuck in the mattress, less than a foot from Raya’s side.

Chad rushed in beside her and he jumped his right leg into her lower back as hard as he could. Her hips smashed down and he jumped her again, higher, into the back of her neck. Her arms shot out, the knife flew free, and her hands slapped to the floor. She tried to get up but her legs were spasming.

Chad looked to Raya, then at the old woman, and he had to be sure.

He ran up beside her and kicked her in the jaw. There was a loud crack and the woman’s head lolled to one side.

The old man was on his back, staring up, arms and legs reaching for a hold, for a knife, for anything, and it did not matter. All that mattered was that he was still moving.

Chad ran to him and stomped another heel into his chest. A great gust of sour breath shot from the ruined old face and the man’s hands clenched his shirt, digging as if trying to find the heart beneath.

Raya’s crying pierced the quiet.

Chad ran to her, leaning down to her side. She was bound at the wrists, but they had cut the cord at her ankles, the man had, to open her up. His mind raced for something to cut her free but he couldn’t stop himself, not when he saw her bare legs again, her underwear, which she had never let him see. The sight of them now, in this context, was such a violation, so unfair to her, he looked away and wanted to scream and go on stomping the old fucking monsters until their eyes popped.

Instead he bent and lifted her in one motion, carrying her high against his chest.

‘You’re bleeding,’ she said, crying with relief.

‘No, I’m not. Are you all right?’

‘I think so.’

He ran with Raya in his arms, carrying her like a toddler, to the opposite corner of the gym, where the moonlight beamed down at the small window in the door. He raised his right leg again and kicked the door, but it didn’t open. It was locked.

Keeping Raya snug against his chest, he turned sideways and leaned down to flip the deadbolt lock. His hand was wet, a section of skin flapping over his knuckles like a torn glove. His fingers slipped. It was hard to grip the lock. But he kept going until at last the tab flipped sideways.

‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘You can put me down. I can walk. Let me go.’

He would not.

‘You’re hurt, please, put me down.’

‘Never gonna happen.’

Chad squeezed her tight and kicked the door open. He ran out cradling her, onto the playground, beyond the asphalt basketball court, into the gravel soccer field, into the weeds. He ran two hundred yards away from the obscenity, carrying her. He found the split two-way partition in the fence and twisted them through. He carried her away, and when she started to cry with relief and kiss him on the ears and said
I love you I love you I love you please stop you’re hurt please baby please still he did not set her down.

Away
was all that mattered. He ran.

A half a block further down 19th Street, the red and blue flashing lights found them, and Beth was there, yelling for them not to shoot, the policemen had guns drawn, and only then did Chad set his Raya down.

Sheila heard the commotion behind the doors but she could not look away from him, from her baby brother. Ethan had probably lost control and started in on the girl. Well, that was to be expected. Miriam would try to hold him back, either out of some ancient jealousy or because she wanted them to stick to the plan, but in the end she wouldn’t bother trying to keep him from his dinner. He was an old pig daddy and he took a lot to get riled up, but once he’d forged his pig iron he wasn’t coming back down until he’d released his sap.

Miriam would back her up if things got out of control, if Sheila screamed for her, but she didn’t want to scream. Not now.

Sheila had known it would come to this. Her and Adam, alone together.

He had paused when he heard the commotion behind the doors, and she knew he was scared. He was still at least seventy feet down the hall, more shadow than body, but Sheila could smell his fear from here. She waited for him, in front of his symbol, beckoning with her hungry eyes, one hand flat against the mace in her pocket, the other fondling the Buck knife’s handle inside her cuff.

He began to walk toward her again.

‘Yes,’ Sheila whispered, and shuddered with anticipation. But she said no more than this. She had no words for what she felt now. She was emanating for him, sending him everything she had stored up and refined these past few days, and for the past thirty years. Her hatred and vengeance and her rotten love, she wanted him to have it all. It would overwhelm him, burn his skin before he was close enough to touch.

He walked toward her, head up, and one hand was set at something on his chest, near his shoulder. Was he wearing a backpack? What had he brought to the ceremony?

A few steps later, something unexpected happened. A fine line of white-blue light began to glow at his hands, around his feet, and then up his legs, snaking like threads of fire up, up, higher to his shoulders and neck and over his head, until he was surrounded by the thinnest, finest aura she had ever seen. She had never seen its color or beauty before, not on him, not on anyone.

Inside the vessel of light his features became visible to her, at last. She saw his face, his young skin, and he was exactly as she remembered him, the last time she had seen him at home on the morning of the last day of school. He had been so excited that day, for what he was planning, but she had already discovered his secret and given it to her parents. All his stupid money for his gay little bicycle. And it had filled her with a calm she had never known, knowing he was about to be crushed.

This is what she saw now, except that he was not smiling now, and did not look happy. His cheeks were the same, glowing, and his eyes were the same soft brown. Even his clothes were the same. His silly T-shirt with the monster on it, with its dirty joke about pee, so faded because he’d worn it a thousand times. And his ragged Levi’s, everything was the same, down to his brand-new white Puma sneakers, the ones he had saved for because they wouldn’t get him any new ones, and why should they? She didn’t get new shoes, so why should he?

Adam walked toward her, and something confused her, his size. She was enraptured by his clothes, the outfit he had worn that day, she hadn’t noticed how short he was. From the end of the hall he had looked smaller, small as a boy, but she thought that had been the distance and the shadows. He was supposed to be a man. He had to be a man, adult-sized like her.

Now, when he was fewer than thirty steps away, she saw that she had been wrong.

Adam was a boy. A small boy, a runt for his age, not yet eleven years old.

He was still young and beautiful, and she had grown old, ugly.

Sheila’s hands began to shake.

Adam was twenty steps away and still walking. Twenty steps away from a woman he no longer recognized, a hideously stunted creature with the blackened face and flat gray eyes of a demon. She seemed enormous, towering above him, and every time she spoke her coarse voice sent ripples of ancient fear through his skin, down into his bones, cooling his blood. There were many things he did not know, did not want to know, but he did know one thing.

He was going to die here tonight.

He took another step.

She pointed to the floor. At his symbol. ‘See what I made for you? This is where it will happen. Are you ready to die for me, sweet little brother?’

He didn’t bother looking down. He kept his eyes on her, staring at her, his face set like alabaster glowing in the reflection of her eyes. The white-blue filaments of fire circling and circling him, surging stronger with each new step.

Sheila bared her teeth.

‘Your bullshit doesn’t work on me,’ he said. ‘I never believed in it. I didn’t believe in any of you. You aren’t capable of magic. You’re nothing but trash, Sheila. Your parents too.’

Sheila gasped. Her eyes were full of fury.

Adam stopped and set his backpack down.

He could see that she was trembling with desire to attack him, end him, slaughter him – yet something held her in check. She wiggled her left arm and a knife slipped into her palm. She waved the blade before him. He was only four or five steps away, and the blade was longer than the one he carried in the pack.

‘I missed this school,’ he said, looking at her pants. ‘I’m surprised you chose to come here. Isn’t this where you learned to hate them all? Isn’t this where you always lost control?’

A wet stain bloomed between her legs, through her dark jeans. She lost control again now, and the laughter of fifty children filled the hall.

‘Stop it! Stop it!’ shrieked the woman who used to be his sister, covering her ears and stomping her feet. ‘Shut up!’

‘I left you behind,’ he said, speaking softly. ‘Because you never took care of me. I have a new family now. If you don’t let Raya and her friend go, if you don’t kneel now and give up, I will be the last thing you see.’

‘Kill her!’ Sheila screamed over her shoulder. ‘Kill her now! Kill his bitch daughter!’

But there was only silence in return.

She faced him again, removing a canister of something from her front pocket. She held it out, aiming a nozzle at him while her other hand quivered with the knife.

Adam opened the top of his pack. She thought he was going for a weapon and lunged at him, stepping into his Saturn symbol. But he did not flinch. He dug into the pack, searching for the last item, the only one he had not figured out. He had the ability to learn things by touching them. He knew it was a talent that could be used for good or evil and if he chose to use it only for good, it would take him far in life. But one object remained in his pack, and he had not yet fathomed its meaning.

His fingers hooked into its three pieces now and for a moment he was yanked out of the school’s dark hallway, cast into light.

Into Dave’s Bike Store, on a cool late spring Wednesday after school, the rain coming down hard. He had sacrificed fifty cents from his savings to take the bus because there could be no mowing today, and the rain was depressing, and because he needed something, another look at the Cinelli. He had been in a funk, the dream half completed but still so far away, weeks that seemed like years, and life at home had been one sad horror after another. Three nights ago his father had come home drunk in the middle of the afternoon, berating Adam for sneaking a slice of leftover pizza, punching him in the chin, not hard enough to leave a visible mark but hard enough for him to see stars. One of his teeth cracked.
 

‘Why don’t you go on and kill yourself?’ his father said, shaking his fist out. ‘Get it over with. You’re useless to us now. You don’t even exist.’
 

He enters the shop this day dripping wet and now he is standing at the counter, staring into the glass at a row of freewheels. He can’t bring himself to walk to the Cinelli, to look up at it. He feels beaten, lost, unworthy. And then Arnie is there, on the other side of the display case, looking down at him, sighing heavily. Adam can’t speak and Arnie doesn’t need to ask. It is written on his face. Arnie disappears behind the saloon doors to the parts storeroom and reappears seconds later with a small paper envelope, wrinkled and faded blue. He takes Adam’s hand and shakes the tiny bag.
 

Three gold rings tinkle into Adam’s palm.
 

The bag says Campagnolo, Made in Italy.
 

‘I was saving these for the big day,’ Arnie tells him. ‘The perfect final touch. They’re brake cable clips, like the World Champions use. Normally they’re silver, but I have an uncle in New York, he’s from the Old Country, and he is personal friends with Tullio Campagnolo himself, the legend, the God. I asked my uncle for a favor and he reached out, to see what he could do. The guys at the factory had those done up for me
personally. Dipped in 24-karat gold. Those three rings are the only Campy clips of their kind in the world, Adam. And they were made for your Cinelli. What do you think about that?’
 

Adam hiccups, swallowing his tears. He can’t bring himself to look up at Arnie, not yet.
 

‘The final touch,’ Arnie says. ‘But I want you to take them now. Something in the rain tells me today is the day they’ll do some good.’
 

With that, Arnie closes his fist around Adam’s fingers, sealing the rings inside his palm. His hand is thick and hairy and stained with bicycle grease, but it is warm, so warm, and Adam doesn’t want him to let go.
 

He looks into Arnie’s eyes, blinking.
 

Arnie nods. Whispers, ‘Don’t give up on me, son. Don’t ever do it.’
 

They stare into each other’s eyes a few seconds more, then Arnie releases his hand and walks away, into the repair bay.
 

Adam shuffles across the showroom floor, to the exit, and when he steps outside, it is no longer raining, it is no longer cold, he is
—
 

Here, in the school, staring at the rings, hypnotized. The gold has faded, chipped off, flaking away like fake jewelry. Adam understands now that Arnie made it up. These aren’t real gold. They were not specially made for him by Tullio Campagnolo himself.

Arnie did this. Dipped them in brass, in his own shop.

For Adam.

He smiled broadly and looked up at the woman in her black make-up.

‘What the fuck are those supposed to be?’ she screeched.

Adam raised his palm before her and the light followed his hand, encircling the rings, until they glowed a brilliant blue-gold.

‘These are my magic. The kind you will never understand.’

Sheila laughed. Adam did not.

He moved closer to her, raising the rings, until she stopped laughing.

‘Go on. Take them,’ he said. ‘I want you to have them.’

Sheila snarled and dropped the mace, reaching to snatch them from his palm, but at the last second her hand froze. She scowled at him, sensing a trick.

‘There’s nothing left,’ he told her. ‘My pack is empty. These are my gift to you. I forgive you, Sheila, if you give up now. You have one last chance to be saved. Take them. Take my forgiveness.’

He could see something giving way inside her.

‘Forgiveness is real,’ he said. ‘If you believe in it.’

The hand holding the knife continued to shake. She bit her lower lip. She was losing her hold. She backed up one step, then came forward again and reached for the rings. When her hand was inches from his palm, the blue-white light flickered and leaped to meet her, delicately attaching itself to her fingertips.

Her hand quivered, her knees buckled, and at the last second she lunged, dipping her left hand beneath his arm, under the rings, and drove the blade into his stomach. The blade tore through his T-shirt, into his belly, and when the handle slammed into his hot skin, Adam’s fingers closed around the rings, squeezing them tightly in his little fist.

He did not cry out. He did not scream or fall.

He looked up into her eyes.

‘Everything,’ he said. ‘For the ones who saved me. For Andrew and Eloise. For Bethany. For Raya. For Chad. For Darren Lynwood. For the bicycles, and for Arnie.’

And then he smiled again, gazing into her eyes, marveling at all she would never understand.

‘You’re finished,’ he said.

Sheila released the knife handle and backed away, repulsion and a crawling terror making itself known upon her features, and the blue fire around her little brother flared, turning orange and red like the flames of a burning house. The flames leaped from his fist clutching the gold rings and crossed the air between them like a serpent, until the fire attached itself to her and set her skin ablaze. The light left him and surrounded her, darkening to the color of a blood sunset, and Sheila screamed, turning away, shrieking as her hair burned to her scalp.

‘Help me! Put it out! Oh God it burns! Help meeeeee!’

She clawed at the double doors, pushing and pushing as the fire ate her alive, and finally she remembered to pull. The door swung at her and she screamed.

Miriam was there, filling the doorway, and she ran into her daughter with a dull grunt. Sheila’s feet left the floor as the old woman hefted her up, and then she could not hold her and Sheila fell down, rolling onto her back.

The fire was gone, the blue and white light as well as the flames, doused, as if they had never been. No trace remained on either of them.

Sheila’s hair lay in disarray across her left eye, her mouth. A hunting knife stood from her diaphragm, angled up under her sternum, its blade sunken into her heart.

The old woman saw what she had done. She looked at Adam, then down to her dying daughter. She fell to her knees and began to breathe heavily.

Adam watched her for a moment, not moving as her hand reached for the knife handle. She squeezed it and pulled. The blade came away dripping deep red. The old woman raised the blade and kissed the blood, closing her eyes, swaying on her knees.

She looked to Adam. Her eyes were moist but no tears flowed.

Adam shook his head. ‘No. No more.’

The old woman turned the blade around and plunged it into her own throat. Animal sounds came from her mouth and she fell forward, collapsing onto her daughter.

Adam walked past her, through the doors and into the darkened gymnasium. He looked everywhere, calling out for Raya, but the girl did not answer.

The room was empty. There was no one in here.

No, that wasn’t true. There was a lump of shadow, a man on the floor, lying on his back. Adam walked to him. The scarred face stared up at him, mouth agape, torn beyond recognition, the cheeks split. His eyes were two dim black pools. One hand, scarred from the fire, was clutching his shirt at his chest, as if the real and final pain had visited him there. Adam leaned down and put his hand around the old man’s neck. He held it there for a while, feeling nothing.

He stood.

A door in the corner of the gym opened with a bang and a paler shaft of night light cut through, making a triangle of reversed shadow across the floor.

Mrs Lynwood ran in, stopped, and looked toward him.

‘Where’s Raya?’ Adam said.

‘She’s safe. They’re outside. We’re all safe. Are you hurt?’

‘No,’ Adam said, and fell to the floor.

Mrs Lynwood ran to his side and set down on her knees. He could smell the outdoors on her skin, in her hair.

‘You’re hurt. Where is it? Tell me what to do.’

‘Not hurt. Free.’

She hovered above him, her hair falling around her face, and she was not an angel. She was a living, loving human being. She felt pain and cried and loved and tried to do good for the people in her circle. She cupped the back of his head in one hand and with the other held his right hand, squeezing. He stared into her beautiful eyes, seeing all he had never seen before, all he had ever wanted from a mother, and he knew he was in trouble. He was falling in love.

He coughed.

‘Don’t go,’ she said, wiping his hair from his eyes. ‘The ambulance is here. They’re coming. Hold on. Please don’t go. We can’t make it without you, sweet boy.’

He smiled.

She kissed him on the lips, and for the second time in his short life Adam Burkett died.